Thank you, Michael. It's great to have you here and to hear you reflect on Ramsey, which I have served in, and also to think about the future, and it's the future and its implications that I think are really interesting. For those that are unfamiliar with Michael and I, just a little background, I met Michael when he was at the Office of National Assessments as I came in. He was pretty well walking out. I didn't take it personally, but Michael was working on transnational issues, and predictably I was working on Pacific Island issues. I went off to Ramsey, Michael went off to the ANU, I went back to the ANU, Michael was doing Asia Pacific. I was doing Pacific Islands again. You went off to Melbourne and did International, and I came to Lowy and did Pacific Islands. I'm thrilled that Michael's decided to just spend the last five years of his life researching a book on Solomon Islands and realized that the center of the Indo-Pacific is actually the Pacific Islands. But I think it's interesting, Michael, just to unpack a little bit, how someone who is involved in international relations, India, Southeast Asia, and a little bit, to be fair, on the Pacific Islands. What is it that made you think that this is something you wanted to do, that it was important? We forget a lot of things in history, so Solomon's isn't unique that way. So what drove you to want to write this book and invest that time? So thanks, Meg, and I was reflecting on our long history as well. Look, most of my career I've been fascinated in Australia-Asia relations and have done a lot of thinking about it. But there was always this element in the back of my mind about Australia and the Pacific, because what really does intrigue me about Australia and the Pacific is that the Pacific is the only part of the world in which Australia is a great power. And in fact, there's an old joke that Australia is too powerful for the Pacific and not powerful enough for Asia. And I think that's been the central tension at the heart of Australian foreign policy for a long time. And I think when I first visited Solomon Islands in 2015, I sort of was fascinated by the country, but I thought that the case study of Ramsey was a classic, you know, a classic kind of microcosm of Australia as a great power, trying to achieve something in the Pacific. But facing all of the problems of great powers whenever they try and exercise power. And what really fascinated me and kept me going on the book was, if you like, the micro-politics of power that played out on the ground in Solomon Islands, particularly that difficult period in 2006-2007 when we faced the government of Manasa Salgavare who decided that his way to success was going to be to play the post-colonial card against Australia and basically boot Australia out of Ramsey and out of the Pacific and out of Solomon Islands. And just watching the micro-politics of how that power plays out was utterly fascinating to me as a political scientist. Well, kind of the micro, but I think today as we have announcements of AUKUS and nuclear submarines and our alliance in the region, that middle power, great power, however you want to define Australia comes into play. And I think you said in your book, interventions and alliances can never escape politics. And we are facing politics as we move forward with AUKUS. You have a region that is very wary of anything to do with nuclear, anything. It doesn't want to be militarized. We have AUKUS that we're trying to in a sense push into the Pacific and convince them this is something they want to be part of. Are there lessons from Ramsey and the way we did our interventions then and the way it transformed perhaps over time that might inform us as I think the Prime Minister is about to go to Fiji to talk to the Pacific Island Forum, talk about AUKUS, talk about our role in this region? Well, I guess the thing that became very apparent to me in Solomon Islands and probably a lot of the rest of the Pacific is that politics is very personalized and very de-institutionalized. If you go to a country like Australia or Indonesia or Singapore or whatever, politics is mediated through powerful bureaucratic institutions. And as you know well, bureaucratic institutions in the Pacific are very weak if not non-existent. And so politics is played by personalities and quite often big personalities and it's always personal and it's always for keeps. And so one of the ways that I think Sogavare himself is watching Australia and watching China is how does he use these to external forces to manipulate the very personal politics of Solomon Islands in his favor? How does he keep Australia close but far enough away and at his beck and call? The best way of doing that is to cultivate a very intimate relationship with China. And if we go with that geopolitical It's intense right now in the region and I think what sent a shockwave through the allies was when Solomon Islands last year which Michael mentioned and I think you mentioned in your remarks came up with a security pact with China that would include police capacity building and indeed embed some Chinese trainers within the force itself. And that was after Ramsey, after more than a decade of police capacity building and close interaction with Australia and New Zealand in the rest of the region. So I'm interested how you see that. Was it a failure of Ramsey? We didn't create a strong enough police force. Has it something to do with the nature of policing in the Pacific or perhaps something else because you mentioned Sogavare said that it was a way to stand up to Australia but Sogavare has also said it was filling a gap in the Pacific and he needed to diversify. So how do you see that piece of history given all your study of Ramsey and all that went into police capacity building?  Sogavare was always an advocate of a powerful armed police force. He was first prime minister in 2000 after the coup where he significantly ramped up the arming of the police force. Quite often criminal elements from particularly the militant forces went into the police force. He created Starter Vision which had high powered rifles and became part of the criminality that was in Solomon Islands at the time. He became prime minister again in 2006-2007 and once again he wanted to arm Solomon Islands police and Ramsey headed by Australia said no. They were listening to the people of Solomon Islands. The people of Solomon Islands who had been traumatised by armed police, armed criminal police, they said we don't want our police armed and so Ramsey said no to Sogavare and Sogavare actually tried to stitch up a deal with Taiwan at the time to provide armed training to Solomon Islands police. So he felt frustrated by Ramsey and Ramsey dragging its heels on arming Solomon Islands police. So with the benefit of hindsight, this is Sogavare scratching a historical itch but it's the best way to get under Australian skins as well. I mean this is Australia's worst nightmare. He knows that very well and he's manipulating that all the way to the bank. That's true and that is a part of Prime Minister Sogavare but to be fair also there was continually this view about and still is in the Pacific wanting to be heard, wanting to have genuine partnerships and that was a bit of a problem and you raise it in your book early on with the Ramsey intervention. They came in, Australia was clearly in control, they always took the position of the special coordinator that was coordinating it and initially it was sort of Australia having a take it or leave it approach. This is the way we're going to proceed and it is a whole package. You can't cherry pick and say you want the policing but not the governance or the policing but not economic development or whatever. So you had that to begin with. I think it's fair that it got more adaptable, had a better partnership near the end but where do we come into this role of the tensions and this whole problem which you raise about colonialism and not wanting to be a colonial partner but on the other hand paying I think 80% or more and wanting to shape the future of this. Yeah it became a very complex challenge for Australia to negotiate. The fact that once Howard and Downer had made the mental leap of yes we are going to intervene, yes we are going to do a state building intervention, it then became it's our way or the highway and there were repeated attempts by everyone from Kamikaze or Onwards to say why don't you help us with land reform. Can you do a little bit more on rural development and there was very much a fear in Canberra of the mission getting dragged into areas that they didn't want to go into. There was a very clear kind of understanding that Ramsay had to steer clear of politics that it would fall apart if it got caught up in the politics of Solomon Island. So there was this very kind of rigid mindset that no no we came in to do these jobs and we're going to do those jobs and no more and we'll leave once those jobs are done and that became a very complex undertaking for Ramsay to try and negotiate its way through. I'd like to get some more insights that you gain because the unique thing about this book is you got access to government cables, correspondence, meeting notes, things that none of us right now have access to to write this and it must have given you an insight into the way Australians were thinking about it which may not have been in the public domain. The real drivers of why we went in and why we stayed for so long it may not have had a deadline but the idea was never it was going to be more than a decade. So I'm interested as you plow through those cables and all that work what are the new insights you got what were the the understandings of why Australia did what it did why it resisted sometimes why it felt it had to give. So I should reassure the audience that I got access to all of those materials with permission of the microphone. I don't have microfilm kind of stashed away. No I was very grateful Peter Varghese as secretary of DFAT gave me access to the DFAT files and cables which I was able to go through. Look it's very hard to keep that the answer to that question short. I think one of the interesting tensions that came out of the the documents and cables, ministerial letters and all of the interviews that I did was this sort of tension between Australia wanting to construct an Australia-like state in Solomon Islands. This kind of maximalist kind of thing that that we haven't done our job properly unless the Solomon Islands Ministry of Finance looks like a mini version of the Australian Treasury with all of the same systems and all of the same processes going on versus the what you would call the pragmatists who were saying we're never going to construct an Australia-like state. It's always going to be some version of the Australian state and then there was that tension of saying how much of do it going partway along the road to constructing the Australian state is enough to say that we've actually achieved something here and what was really interesting post 2013 as Ramsey was contemplating drawing down was that the number of times that I would go to Solomon Islands and talk to Ramsey officials and quite a few people were using the example of scaffolding that Ramsey was like a scaffolding around a crumbling building and so it had constructed the scaffolding and it had allowed some reconstruction to go ahead but no one really knew when they started taking the scaffolding off whether the building would start to crumble again and that was the art of trying to work out when Ramsey it when it was appropriate for Ramsey to to to kind of withdraw and I think the the real kind of sharp intake of breath occurred about a year after a year and a bit after Ramsey had withdrawn when riots broke out in Honiara again and Australian troops had to go back in and I think there were a number of people in Canberra who thought we took the scaffolding off too quickly and I think that's an ongoing question in in a lot of minds did we do enough and quite interestingly when you talk to Solomon Islanders they also wonder whether Ramsey pulled out too quickly and whether Solomon Islands made enough of Ramsey's presence over those 14 years. And how long do you stay is always the question before you have to go. I think this whole thing of Ramsey going in it was a whole of region effort as you talked about and I think absolutely it built regional solidarity and now we leverage that up we talk about a family first approach to security in the region meaning that we look to the Pacific Island Forum members first obviously that's not China but that's also not United States it's not Japan either in terms of the Pacific Island Forum. So this is actually quite an interesting concept I wanted to talk to you about this this family first is this the right approach it has the advantage of the interoperability leveraging off of what we did achieve with Ramsey but is it as you talked about in your remarks but also in the book is it just this security motif coming around again of strategic denial or a South Pacific Monroe Doctrine doctrine you refer to. So I'm just interested in your reflections as we really push hard on this family first narrative. So the reality that's occurred is that the Pacific itself has changed for a long time Australia was able to assume a leadership role in the region and really foist its own agendas onto the Pacific region. So you know after the Hawk Keating reforms we tried to push a kind of neoliberal agenda onto the region then 9-11 occurred and we tried to push a kind of transnational security agenda onto the region and then climate change became an issue and we didn't want to go down that track so quickly and we tried to drag them towards our climate change agenda. Over time the Pacific got wise to this and it realized that that particularly around the climate change agenda the Pacific has a global stage to act on and somewhere in the midst of Ramsey the Pacific said to Australia we are no longer going to dance to your tune. Climate change is our tune and we're sort of in a situation now where we're trying to kind of convince the Pacific that there is a kind of geopolitics play going on and the Pacific is having none of it. The Pacific in fact is saying bring it on bring the geopolitical competition on. Never have so many countries been so interested in the Pacific. Never have we been given so much access to markets to technology to investment bring it on. We'd like the geopolitical competition. This is a completely new and completely complex game for Australia and we've got to up our game here. Bring it on but they're asking for more control over the security agenda. So we are now doing bilateral security agreements Benawatu, Kiribati and we're currently negotiating one with Papua New Guinea which is going to be a security treaty so one up and so it is about those countries starting to say what's on the agenda when we talk about security as well as being part of the Pacific family. But I thought it was interesting when Prime Minister Marapa of Papua New Guinea talked to Albanese our Prime Minister and said you know what we want a security treaty but we want it broader and if there's one thing that we need to be secure it's economic sovereignty so he's just dragged in trade and investment to unusually a security treaty. And it goes back to Ramsey where we went in and said there's three pillars. There's an economic pillar, a law and order pillar and a governance pillar and we have to balance these out. We had a lot of trouble in Ramsey keeping that balance working and I think we're going to have a bit of trouble with a security treaty that starts to leech into investment, economics, climate change and more traditional security reflective of the boy declaration but nonetheless if you're you're going to try and do this it's quite complex. So you know when you look at Ramsey and that balancing act the three pillars and now you look at the way security is being discussed regionally the boy declaration on regional security it's many different forms of security and the bilateral security agreements that are a little beyond what normally one thinks of. Where do you see this is going to go? I mean it's I mean I think people like James Marape are watching the Solomon Islands very closely of course they do and I would think in his quieter moments he would think it's a master stroke on behalf of Sogavare because it's given him leverage. If I was negotiating the Australian security agreement with Papua New Guinea I would be very worried. What does it mean in relation to Bougainville? What happens if conflict breaks out in Bougainville? What does the security treaty commit Australia to doing in that situation? And of course as you know the long history of the Australian relationship with post-independence Papua New Guinea do we provide them with budget support? Do we provide them with project aid and what are the conditions of that? I think it sounds like Australia is signing a very big open check to Papua New Guinea and it's absolutely in Papua New Guinea's interest to keep this going. Yep doing a good job at the moment. So Michael before we go to questions I wanted you've written a really thorough history of Ramsey with sources that we all hope to get access to one day but maybe not just for a little while yet. There's an old saying and it kept just reiterating in your book that if we don't know our history you're doomed to repeat it. So I just thought in wrapping up you know your reflections on have we learned the lessons the lessons that there are on Ramsey and in future engagements, alliances, interventions would we do something different? So I thought a lot about this and I really can't see and I'd be happy if people would put me right on this. I can't see a reflective process that's occurred within DFAT about what happened in Ramsey. What did we learn? You know it was partly the reason I wanted to do such a thorough job in the book because you know the the the files themselves are not in a terribly good condition. I don't think they're particularly complete. I don't see the process of a thorough kind of post withdrawal review that's happened and the lessons learned. I think the absorption of AusAID by DFAT back in 2014 is a huge mistake. It's lost us an enormous amount of expertise on the Pacific but also on development and I don't see DFAT as having inherited that expertise. So no I don't think we've we've learned the lessons of Ramsey and I would encourage DFAT and other institutions of government to start a process of self-reflection of what's actually happened and to listen to Solomon Islanders. Some of the best interviews I did for the book were Solomon Islanders who had had some really profound reflections on the politics of Ramsey and what had worked and what hadn't. Well I think it's time to do collective reflection with the audience and open it up for the questions that are burning in your mind on this topic of Ramsey. What have we learned and also where are we going. So I'm happy to throw it open to people in the audience for any questions. If you would just identify yourself and your affiliation I think that would be helpful for Michael when he's doing his responses. So do we have any questions right here and then we'll go this way. Yes please. Congratulations. When I visited Ramsey in 2006 one of the civilian experts there I think it was Sue Ingram who's now at the ANU said the problem with trying to rebuild a state is that you're starting you don't have a nation yet to build it on and I just wonder if the Solomon Islands is any more a nation now than it was then with people up north in Sokobari's own province looking at Bougainville and maybe feeling more familiar with them and the people on Malaito that depose Premier running his own foreign policy with Taiwan and talking of a referendum on separation. So that that's a great point that Sue makes. I would go further and I would say that there was no nation in Solomon Islands and there was no state. So the British very much like Australia and Papua New Guinea ruled Solomon Islands between 1893 and 1978 on a very minimalist they didn't want to invest anything and they didn't invest anything and the people of Solomon Islands were basically taxed by the British colonial authorities that provided a minimum amount of you know public order and that was about it very little public health almost no education and then when it was obvious that decolonization was happening in the Pacific they adopted a measure of self-government but it was a pretty poor amount and so basically Solomon Islands was gifted a Westminster system with no history or heritage of understanding how that system quite a complex and I would say socially embedded system worked so the politics were dysfunctional from the start and there was little help in building the institutions of government there was no there was never any provision of public law and order particularly in rural Solomon Islands where most Solomon Islanders live across thousands of islands and so there was no state and the state that did exist was hollowed out and gutted by a series of venal prime ministers and you know the kind of economic interests that came in to exploit Solomon Islands forests as well. Claims for separatism were there at the time of the founding of Solomon Islands so I think it was three of the provinces never even attended Independence Day celebrations and never acknowledged the creation of Solomon Islands so this was never a polity to start with and I think it's one of the challenges we face in the Pacific that the state is an alien form that has been grafted on to these societies and hasn't particularly taken root very well and as I talk about in the book the state is another form of resource extraction that is used by provincial politicians to claim resources and to build their power bases back within their electorates and that was a process that was accelerated during Ramsey so it's a difficult situation. Sogavari himself is a proud nationalist he would love to create a Solomon Islands nation and talks a lot about the nation of Solomon Islands he really believes it. The problem is that the people of Solomon Islands are increasingly divorced from the political class you know the contempt that you hear from ordinary Solomon Islanders for their elected politicians who they see as venal as corrupt and the China factor actually increases the distance between the elected politicians and the people of Solomon Islands. People of Solomon Islands tend to be highly suspicious of China they are opposed to the large relatively large Chinese migration to Solomon Islands that they see as having sort of stitched up the small scale economy there at the expense of ordinary Solomon Islanders and they are also very attentive to China's kind of crackdowns on the Christian church in China itself so this is a complex politics and it's it I think it militates against the creation of a of a viable nation and a viable polity there. We go next to Mihai. Hi Michael my name is Mihai work with Meg in the Pacific Islands program here at Lowy you would have seen Canberra under a lot of pressure over the last year or so with respect to Solomon Islands. Prime Minister Sugavari achieved what arguably previous prime ministers before him have wanted as well which is to put Australia off balance to deliver an asymmetric kind of diplomacy. How can Australia regain its balance in its relationship with Solomon Islands? So it's something I've thought a lot about it's a very very complex game. What I would urge the Australian government to do would be not to compete directly with China. I think there's been too much the Chinese are doing X so we'll do Y to kind of directly counter that. I think Australia needs to be a little bit more confident about its position in Solomon Islands and Pacific more generally. One of the legacies of Ramsey as I said was the building of a an extraordinary relationship of trust and warmth with the people of Solomon Islands and we should we shouldn't be competing to build you know stadiums and roads and things like that. We should be investing heavily in law and order law and order services health and education which is what the people of Solomon Islands really want and what the government of Solomon Islands is not delivering for its own people. That is the big vulnerability that Sugavari and the political class have is the fact that they are not popular with the people of Solomon Islands and it's the vulnerability that was there all the way through the Ramsey operation and it's the vulnerability that still exists. So we need to be clever we need to work with his government obviously as well but we need to realise that we've got an enormous asset in the people of Solomon Islands also but this is this is going to be a long game China is here to stay. So we'll go right to the back and then I'll come forward. Hi Michael my name is Mary I work actually in the private sector with a satellite company but focused on the APAC region and I actually would be interested to know what just with the changing geopolitics in the region we saw Telstra acquire Digicel to combat I guess China's acquisition. So I guess what are your thoughts on the role of the private sector in partnering with government to tackle some of these challenges you mentioned addressing I guess tech and health and education. I think there's a lot of I guess a broader skill base available in the private sector and I guess how would you see that or is that something that could happen with DFAT or Defence or whichever relevant area. Yeah look I think there is a significant role to be played by the private sector. One of the things that Ramsey didn't do was to broaden the Solomon Islands economy away from let's face it basic resource extraction. So there are basically three commodities that Solomon Islands economy is based on logging is one very unsustainable minerals is another and fishing is the third. Ramsey went in with great hopes that are liberalizing that liberalizing the economy selling off public sector assets would bring a much broader economy broader economic base and it really didn't happen when Ramsey left. The base was about as as narrow as it always was. I still think that Australian and other kind of international investors have got a role to play in helping broaden the economy and that would have a major effect on the society of Solomon Islands as well. I mean Solomon Islands has a very young population and a very, very high youth unemployment rate. It's one of the factors that makes the place so volatile. So I do think that there's a major role for the private sector to play particularly around the tech sectors in the Pacific. I think we had a question just in the middle over here. Thank you very much. You mentioned health education law and order just a moment ago and you added climate before that they would all fall into the definition of human security I might suggest. Is one of the failures of Australia's response a lack of appreciation or commitment to human security as opposed to traditional security? Does that help explain the forgetting and might it also explain some of the difficulties we are having in the region at the moment? Yeah well I think it's unarguable that Australia's recent motivations in the Pacific have been very much attuned to traditional security reasons.  I think we could benefit from some refocusing. Again I go back to the need for us to rethink not having an independent aid agency, development assistance agency, to recreating that expertise in the Australian government which I think has been fundamentally lost. I think a rebalancing in the way that Australia approaches the Pacific rediscovering some of those older human security impulses that we had through the 1990s in the Pacific would be very much to Australia's benefit both on the human security and the traditional security sides. I think we have time for one last question maybe at the back there. I've got Matt Brown on the news standards editor at the ABC. You mentioned that Howard and Downer decided on the intervention against departmental advice, so where were they getting advice from to do it? Where did that come from? Look again I think it was very much their reading of the politics of the moment and I would really put it down to their sense of Australia as a major strategic actor. Remember this was the period of the deputy sheriff. It was the great state building moment. It was the belief particularly that neo-conservative belief that the George W. Bush administration had that the West was all-powerful, that democracy and capitalism were the natural order of things and that with a little bit of a push and shove developing states could be shown the way towards stability and order and the Western way of the world. I was just saying to Michael and others and Meg and others before we came down that Howard actually made the decision to go against departmental advice in May of 2003 that weekend when he and Jeanette were invited to Crawford Ranch of George W. Bush as the reward for having participated in the invasion of Iraq and it was on the plane flight back that Howard read the memorandum from PM&C that said we don't recommend an intervention, we recommend more of the same arms length aid and advice. Howard sort of resolved to call Downer as soon as the plane landed which he did during that phone call that Howard and Downer decided that Australia would lead an intervention into Solomon Islands. It was one of the most remarkable areas of a Prime Minister and a Foreign Minister deciding that the moment was right to go against what had basically been 20 years of Australian foreign policy orthodoxy and do something completely different. That's great and I think we've come full circle to interventions and alliances never can avoid the politics of the situation and the personalities. So I'd like to thank Michael on behalf of Lowy, Michael fully loving myself for coming, launching your book here for a very stimulating conversation. I believe the book is being sold outside somewhere but thank you, thank you for urging us to keep reflecting, analysing and thinking about the future and what it means. So on behalf of all of us, thank you very much.


Hi, I'm Ms. ECCE. Come on a journey with me. I will show you important aspects of my journey of being and becoming a professional. I'm 42 years old and have completed a diploma in ECCE. I'm employed as an early years teacher at Equality ECD Centre. For you to understand my journey, I'll unpack what being and becoming a professional in ECCE means. I will use signposts to give you an overview of the concepts and the content of being and becoming a professional.


On the 18th of March the headlines this morning the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv has come under Russian missile attack. In this video I am fly fishing from my kayak at Wimbledon Lake which is nestled in the beautiful peaceful setting of Expo National Park. It's my first proper fishing trip with the kayak this year and I'm joining my fishing buddy Ian. The venue has gained a reputation for fish that really pull and that's no exaggeration. I teach people to fish for a living and separate work from play by making my own fishing a little bit different and difficult for myself. On my first visit I just wanted to catch a fish on a dry fly by the tide myself. Then it was a case of wanting to catch on traditional wet flies, a technique I hadn't done before. And on my third trip I just desperately wanted to catch one of the wild ground trout using natural nymph patterns. It keeps my fishing interesting having these little challenges and it was all going really well until my very last visit. I met up with blogger and angling journalist Dominic Garnett. My aim was to just catch on teams of buzzers, washing line style but I caught nothing and I had to watch on as Dominic called fish after fish after fish on his kennec killer fly despite my terrible letting efforts. A link to Dominic's blog is in the description.  Last summer I was there, I blanked and today I've overslept by an hour. I'm going to try and catch a trout today using a lie that my kids have made. I meet up with Ian and get on to the water to find him playing with his new toy, the Hoby Lynx. On top of that is attached an anchor pole. Might be handy. Once we're all set up to go we head down to Bessam's bridge. On this occasion I decide to take my six weight floating line with the single aim of trying to catch a trout, a fly is tied by my children. There's very few places that I can fish at where you don't hear traffic or aeroplanes or people. I think that's why I love it here so much. So the first fly to go on is going to be the youngest first, I want to put phrases on. Not sure what it looks like, I'm not trying to fish like a lure I think, like a reverse Montana isn't it, back at the front for you at the back. The challenges of fly fishing from the kayak is that for one you're sat down or stood up and secondly the kayak is quite light and can spin round in even the lightest of breezes. On previous trips I've tried to take other rods with other lines on, the problem with that is that you can quite often get in the way when you're trying to adjust your positioning mid cast so it really pays off just taking the one rod. I'm using a six weight rod with a floating line and to start off with I've added a six foot sinking tip and I'm fishing in about 10 foot of water after about half an hour of trying without any signs of fish I'll finally see a fish rise so I decide to take off the sink tip and cover it. It took me a while but I've finally hooked one. On phrases fly, it's a nice fish, these fish are so strong as you can see it's spinning my kayak around 360 degrees. How cool is that catching on phrases fly? Well done son. Six year old's fly, not a lot of help. Make yourself knocked down. Time with him, so precious. It's a pretty man. Yeah, metal bits, let's go underneath all the way around, under. I see a good boy. Let's go fishing, see if we have to win. I think we should. Big old fish. I actually thought I was going to blank today, don't know why. I'm going to dispatch it first, it's only right. He's dead. There's the fly in his mouth. The size of that mouth. Look at his phrases fly. It's a steam looking fish actually. You have to hand it to Mark Underhill and his team because that is last. See if I can get another. One flows fly this time. She chose all the components. Got a dumbbell on the front, a couple of J-wings and some hen-hackle around the front. Not quite sure what it's meant to be on the tape but it looks cool. It's all slightly, slightly sad to get it slimy or ruined by fish teeth but I think she'll be pleased if I caught on it. I imagine this is going to sink like a brick. Sinking like a brick. That's going to be stripped back really quick. It's funny some of the commotion can bring them in especially the stockies that are used to food fights when the pellets go in. They're quite inquisitive. You won't see it because of the surface reflection but the water clarity at Wimble Ball is extraordinary. And after a while I spot one or two fish. I followed it right up to the rod tip. Saw me and then turned. I got a bit excited. Yeah. On the Fraser fly, yeah. I was hauling and I hauled the reel instead of the line. How you got on? I'm stalking them over here. Sorry? You could be stalking them over here. Oh really? Yeah. It's quite cold over that other side. Yeah I thought, I did think what on earth were you doing all the way over there in the wind. On the Flows fly, what a result. Sorry Flows, this one's smaller. Not only did I lose the fish but the fly got destroyed as well. So we headed off to the Upton arm. Why is it another end of the vessel fly? To see if we can find some brown trout. I was joined here because I think he's got a brown trout on. He's certainly playing it more gingerly than he would a rainbow I reckon. Have you seen it yet here? It's strapping like a brownie isn't it? Is it a rainbow? Some good bent in your rod isn't it? Is he in the net? Yeah. Cool. Well done. What's that tree? You're right next to it. Oh yeah. That's a cracker. That's alright isn't it? Yeah. That's wicked. I'm well gel mate, well gel. Then there's a gust of wind and this happens. Sorry you know, all help is abandoned. Get your pole down. So if you want to see Ian's fish, you'll have to check out his YouTube channel. Right, no fanning around with cameras. I'm absolutely certain this is a brown trout. He will not let up. It's his rainbow. It's all that. It fought so much harder than the last one, but it's about two thirds of the size, probably half the size even. I'll tell you what. He's not dead, he's just faking it. My knuckle. I've got a kneecap now. It's like the butcher of Seville.  I think he's dead. You reckon?  Right, you ready for your picture, sir? Yes. Thanks very much. That's all right. Absolutely convinced that as brownie. It was giving such a good account for itself. What was that one, Charlie? That was on a gold ribbed tears here. When I was, it was static. Wasn't it hard drifting around to take a photo of your brownie? So after all that, it turned out to be a rainbow. About half the size, probably, the last one I caught, but it fought about three times stronger. Up to Narm is normally a very sheltered part of the reservoir, but when there's an easterly wind like there was on this day, it really blows through. So I set up my drogue and did a steady drift, which allowed me to fish the nymph along the bottom very slowly. With the pedal fins, drogue and the rudder as a potential snag, I'm brewing this fish quite hard. I'm staying deep. I won't pretend that I wasn't disappointed but I lost that fish, but I was on a two fish limit, took it, and it was due to be released anyway. Sounding funny around with a camera. Yeah, and I saw it right. He chucked one. It is a good fish. It's good to strengthen the wrist. It's not a brain, but it's got funny marks on it. Eee, well done. Are you bashing this one? Can I get it on camera? Does it tug on anything in its stomach? Just that tiny little buzzes, but not a lot.  When I did a video on whips, I got loads and loads of interest. It was really funny, exactly, yeah. Well done. Was that on your cove? Yeah, it was on the cove, yeah. And that was that. A lovely day out. If you subscribe, you're supporting what Fishwish does with young people and disadvantaged anglers.


Yeah, we start this Thursday edition of the Sportsmax Zone by continuing to discuss the fallout from the decision by the Jamaican government not to bid for matches in the 2024 T20 World Cup. This discussion has taken several spins, including the issue of an overall lack of international matches at the country's cricket mecca, Sabina Park. In recent times, the ground has been predominantly used for football matches at the schoolboy, Premier League and international levels. The last time international cricket was played there was August 2022. The West Indies took on New Zealand in defending the decision not to bid for the T20 World Cup. Jamaica's minister of sport, Olivia Grange, said her government will invest 100 million Jamaican dollars or just over 600 and 46,000 US dollars into the development of youth cricket.


How do you move from here to there, to that world of cloud native architecture? I like to talk about DevOps, the concepts of DevOps, the principles, practices, tools and techniques that you apply and when you learn DevOps, make a fundamental difference in the way you build software and the way you deliver software faster. Red Hat fundamentally loves Linux and that's absolutely true, but we also love Kubernetes and we love Java.


Is it Caroline? Yes, it is. I can see Caroline there. Nice to see you. Thank you to go ahead. Thank you. And Rebecca is here with me. So we will thank you first of all for inviting us to join tonight. And we will keep this brief because I think the material that we're showing, we have done a few events now recently where we've shown similar material, probably a few new photos in here. But we're at a point in the program where the infrastructure works are quite are quite long. And I think, you know, we're going to be limiting what we can update. So if we do a very quick run through, but by all means, we can come to spend more time on questions and come back to slides as needed. And I think, you know, Mike has done a great job of just reminding everybody of the context of the the allocated site and of the consent for the Water Beach Barric site. And you can just see the image on the left hand side, very faintly, the red line on the first image, just showing that wider outline consent. And then the the orange kind of arc that runs through the slice through the development really doesn't have a line sprayer then, has she? Sorry. I can see Caroline. Caroline is moving for me, as it were. OK, I have noticed I'm having a few technical problems today. So if I completely lose you, Rebecca will continue. So my apologies. Caroline, what was it? It's lovely to see you. Perhaps it might help if you're having, yeah, great. If you want to turn your camera off, it might make you. Well, give that a go. And if it gets difficult, I will stay quiet and let and let Becca just jump in as well. But Becca, please do as we go. But so just a reminder of the the first phase of the development connecting to the existing roundabout of the research park down to the first homes, first primary school and obviously opening up a very beautiful 23 acre lake and then connecting down to the village. Should go on to the next slide and back. Thanks. Just keen to include some photos. It's obviously not been possible to get everyone up to side recently. So this is just an image of Stonebond, who are our first house builder on site, and you can just really start to see the development taking shape. So the water is obviously part of our sustainable drainage pathways through the woodlands. And they're just starting to prepare the woodlands now for the first place spaces, Stonebond delivering the first homes. And you can just see our primary road to the left of the development. Part of the early infrastructure obviously includes cycle pedestrian connections throughout the campus and then the campus throughout the site and onto the wider network. Part of that, as you can see, is putting in these pedestrian cycle bridges over our sites. So part of our entrance features right beside the northern entrance. And this runs then right back behind. I think if anyone remembers behind the school site and connecting down onto the bridge that will cross over into the railway. Sustainable travel hub is one of the first initiatives coming forward opposite the Stonebond parcel. We're working with a number of partners to make sure that we have buses in for our first residence. That's our shuttle buses connecting to the station, a wider bus network connecting into the mud and park and ride and also then more sustainable roads to travel. You know, we'll have electric bikes and possibly scooters and kind of information hubs here by repair shops, that kind of thing. So that's ongoing at the moment. And as I mentioned, Stonebond being our first house building partner there on site and due to open their show home by November, but no doubt will be in touch over the next few months as they start launching their sales. And Kala are a little bit further behind, but due to start on site, if not this month, it will definitely be next month. Again, launching their show home within 12 months, a little bit longer, just timescales on first bird, just because we're starting with a number of apartments as well. And then that pretty much picks up and maintains the pace of the program that we've agreed just worth touching on. These all have obviously affordable housing. Both parcels have 31 and a half percent affordable and that's all for 10 years. So we're working really hard to make sure that we deliver all four 10 years from the very beginning of the development to make sure that there's a product for all different ranges of incomes, just some images of the team as they're surveying and working on the lake to make sure it's already. We are so excited about opening up the lake. We are talking to so many people about having our swimming fishing area, possibly some paddle boarding. We're talking about triathlons and all the ranges for activities. It it's really starting to look so beautiful. And I think the opportunity that brings having it open from day one for everybody to use is really, really quite special. And so really hoping that if we're allowed, maybe when we do the next session and we can start to do these things in person, we'd love to hold a community day to bring people up to see progress and really see the lake in all its glory. Obviously, a big focus recently on our eight 10 works, but also the wider improvement works that we're doing. Very conscious, as mentioned earlier, that this is ahead of the 10 study being finalized. And, you know, obviously, this time scales are really unsure of on that. But I think what's really important is that with this this eight 10 improvement, these improvements are going forward now. And we've been working really, really closely with county and other stakeholders and making sure that we do absolute best we can within the constraints of the existing road and is challenging. You know, we're the first to say it. We'd we'd love to be able to put in the roads of the cycle network that we have been able to do on the on the development. But I think, you know, we're working with an existing highways boundary. People's homes run right up to that boundary. And it has been a challenge. But we're really confident we have reviewed this and done absolutely everything we can to ensure we're doing as much as we can, improving that pedestrian cycle link into Cambridge, as well as, of course, our mirrorway route. So the biggest investment, you know, one a six transport cycle focused investment is our mirrorway route and the bridge crossing the eight 10. So that's being able to be more of a segregated route before and after Lamb Beach and a reminder of the the bridge that will cross the eight 10. And we have been working with the combined authority in the County Council and the GCP just to make sure that we are coordinating the work that we're doing. We're the last thing we want to do is is take out this beautiful bridge in a few years time. So we're working really closely with them to ensure that they have our designs and we keep them informed of these works. And I think I mentioned on the last time we did this, that we're very focused on how the play spaces are coming forward. The first two are actually being constructed as we speak, so nice and early and hopefully already for the summer, when the village and local residents can come up to enjoy them ahead of our first new residents and also working closely with the primary school and the County Council to make sure that we're considering things like outdoor learning and forest schools within the public realm, not just within the school boundary. And I think just picking up on Kate's question, I think just to reassure you, you know, there is significant green space on this development. We are back. I can remind me of the percentage that we're at. I has it has it has got in my mind in the last minute. For biodiversity net gain, we're looking at about 13 and a half percent at the moment and looking to get that up as we get into the detail of all of these schemes. So making sure that both the existing ecology that's there, the woodland and the grassland is improved, but also putting in place new landscape has been an absolute priority. It's one of the reasons that we do that ahead of the house builders alongside the house builders moving in that green infrastructure goes in alongside the the grey infrastructure of the cycleways and roads and drains and the blue infrastructure. Obviously, as you can see here, and a lot of the work that the guys have been doing is also sort of making sure that we've got marginal planting at the side of the of the water here to to really hit our as well as our biodiversity net gain. We've also got species action plan that are specifically supporting species that are under pressure in the local area or fit in with the with the habitat targets more locally. And there's a couple of examples here. You may be able to see some of them from the A10 are bug hotels, beetle areas and some of our bird boxes that are going up in the trees as well. So there's an off and not just plants of logs. They are they are genuinely part of our species action plans. And the team are working really hard on living as it may be. Absolutely. And as Berger said, the intention is that these spaces will be ready for people to use by the summer, you know, as soon as we're ready to open up the development. And I think just going back to the point on wider green space, you know, we've always committed to opening up as much temporary space in the short term as well. And I'm sure Kate, to recall those conversations we've had with the parish, you know, we're already looking at how we open up the green space just after any Android early. We're looking at as we've progressed the demolition, how we can open up some space within the development short term. We've been working with the local football clubs to do that. So I think just to reassure you, I hope you will be pleasantly surprised when you see the extent of green space that will be available for use by the end of this year. And just picking up on the heritage as well, obviously a lot of this is about future and future development. But we've we've got archaeology going on at the moment. Obviously with the weather, the winter and Covid, they've been slightly up against it, but we have been able to host a couple of archaeological visits with local groups and we've got local school coming up in a couple of weeks as well. So if you are interested in coming and finding out what they're up to, then let us know you can log on on our on our website or get in touch with my colleague, Bruce. And we'll also be looking to hold another update exhibition at the Folham Museum this summer, where we can share some of the finds that are coming through at the moment. We also had a really good session with Heritage Group last week to draw on the the naming consultation to help us think about the street naming strategy for the site and making sure that the agricultural farming history as well as the military history is blended in. So that would be something we'll be reporting back, hopefully, in the next session. Thank you very much. And I'd like to, while you're there, thank you very much for your slide and thank you very much for putting up the contact details for Bruce's calendar, because one of the questions coming up will relate to that. But firstly, before we miss it, can we ask the question from Ivan Gilzine? Can you tell us if any plans have been made for a burial ground within the new town? So, well, at the moment, there's nothing set out in Section 106 or in the spatial planning for additional burial space. We obviously put a significant amount of space over to an enhanced existing cemetery part of the early works with that. And I think the view was that it was quite a lot of space there, but it was something that we would keep under review talking to the parish council and find us and others going forward. Thank you very much. And Sharon, did you want to pick up on these questions or would you like me to continue? No, it's fine. I can see the ones that are in the question and answers for this item. So, Jane Williams, can you tell us if any plans have? So we've done that one, sorry. Jane Williams, can you say why are you pile driving on the site and what may be done to reduce the noise nuisance to the village? So that's for Caroline or Becca? Yeah, well, we have, as you know, apartments being built on the development. And so it's it's not unusual to install foundations for apartments. And I just the rig has just been delivered to site. So I am not aware of any noise issues. This is at the moment would be right at the north of the site. And I don't believe we've received any complaints of noise for piling for foundations that distance. But, you know, more than happy to pick that up separately if there is concern over noise, because we're certainly not aware of it yet. Thanks, Caroline. And then from Nigel C. Marks, hi, Caroline. Great to see the A10 cycle way and away. Any news on the lighting for disability groups? So the pathway can be used safely. Do you know why the pathway was not inclusive? Lighting is not difficult. So the existing column lighting on the A10 has been obviously part of the review as we've been widening the existing path. And I think that is a really important point here. We're widening the existing pedestrian cycle route that has lighting column along the A10. Now, we have been in regular discussion with the county on lighting and requirements for additional lighting. There are some ongoing conversations about that. And I, you know, fully committed to continue working with the county to ensure that if we need to make changes to the scheme that we can, and we were really keen to get this scheme underway for a number of reasons. A lot of a lot of a lot of focus on the A10, you know, for really sad reasons that we're all very aware of and obviously the recent fatality. And, you know, we were really committed and as have the county being to working closely together to make sure we can deliver these improvements as fast as we can. So we, as you might be aware, have accelerated delivery of the two-concrossing on the A10 years before it was obligated to do so in planning. And we're really keen to do the very best we can. So look genuinely committed to continue working and talking to the county to see if there's anything that we've missed through this further lighting that's required. Thank you, Caroline. And we've then got a question from Michael Williamson. Have the issues about installing a bus stop close to the old railway station being resolved? How will this work if when the crossing is changed to full barriers? Oh, this one is really painful. I'll be completely honest. And I'm in absolute agreement. We desperately, desperately want to be able to connect our buses and the new development across the tracks. And ideally, you know, ideally we'll do a loop in the car park and the shuttle bus will come back out. We are having some challenges with this. There's height restrictions on the car park, network rail have some challenges about locating a new bus stop close to the railway tracks. So we're working with so many partners on this. What we had done was, and I think anyone that has seen the application that was submitted, we very clearly set out in our cover letter what our interim solution is or what the plan is at the moment is everything that the maximum we can do given these constraints but that we are fully committed to still working on this and finding a solution. Nobody wants the bus to cross those tracks more than we do. We don't want to drop our residents off and then ask them to cross the tracks on foot. And I think it's, you know, so I've been complete agreement with some of the challenges raised. We are finding it difficult to get the bus stop located on the east of the tracks but we are still working on it. So I'm afraid I don't have a final solution but other than to say that we're doing all we can to make that happen. And we are talking to the county but a couple of options on the car park if possible. And as for the barriers, I did see, we are aware obviously the barriers are moving forward which is great news. And we obviously have the contribution in the interim from First Occupation that funds the staffing of that crossing. So to make sure from First Occupation that staff and safer. So that's how we managed in the short term and then obviously the barriers will be controlled. Thanks very much, Caroline. And I just wanted to pick up on the noise of the piling and I can see that Jane Williams has put in the Q&A that this was mentioned at Water Beach Parish Council which it was last night. I wonder if it would appear that some piling has already started unless what we were hearing was demolition but I think if it was being heard as a piling I've just been started. We did just take the, so we've got a lot of noise receptors and noise monitoring that's going on as part of the demolition but obviously picks up any other noise as well. As we haven't had any complaints on noise so please do let us know if there are issues with that. The guys checked the noise transmission recordings this morning that there were about 10% of the maximum that they can be. So at the moment they seem to be within a very acceptable level I mean obviously we sit the other side as well in the office on that. So we're kind of aware of some noise but I mean the main aspects of bringing the we're not feeling any piling noise but we are a lot closer to it than the village so we'll have to take that away and investigate it because it's not something that we were aware was having an impact. So if people do hear noise and are disturbed then the sensible thing is to call Bruce Callander and then he can look into it at the time can't see. Yeah if you ring the office then it's better to get a timely officer or email Bruce on the details and I can easily put those in the chat as well if that's helped us. That's super thank you very much indeed and hopefully you'll stick around for any questions at the end if that's possible. Thank you.


Yo yo what's happening fellas welcome back to the channel I am sure y'all are looking ridiculous right now. As of the filming of this video there's a huge thing going on right now we all have to stay quarantined well actually some states are trying to reopen it up I'm hey you won't see me going into any of those shops and I'm sure you guys are probably feeling the same way but you need a haircut. Well welcome to this video and welcome to my channel so I've been cutting my own hair since around 2015 or so and the reason why is because if you think about it you got a booking appointment to a barber you got a commute there you got a wait in line then you get your haircut then you drive all the way back home you take a shower all that takes around one to two hours okay I don't like wasting time like that so for me whenever I cut my hair it takes around you know 20-30 minutes then I take a shower then I do my hair and I'm ready to go and I can cut it more often so it saves me around a hundred dollars a month roughly and so today I'm gonna take you guys do how I cut my own hair personally it's not gonna be the quality of what a barber could do because a barber can see all of your head you're just doing this yourself with the mirror it's not gonna be the same exact quality but you're almost gonna get the same quality there's going to be some equipment that you guys are gonna need I'll leave as much as I can in the description below basically you're gonna need some clippers I have these wall clippers that I got from Amazon I'll leave a link in the description where you guys can pick it up you're gonna need a trimmer you're gonna need a handheld mirror you're gonna need a comb you're going to need some shears and this is optional I like having some thinning shears as well and you're gonna also need a bathroom with a mirror in it so just follow along this video is gonna be slightly longer than your normal hair cutting video because I show you guys exactly how I do everything and then you guys are gonna see me go from this to this and how you guys can get similar results so anyways enough talking let's head to the bathroom grow out the hair and let's cut it oh hey guys so as you can see with the power of editing I took my shirt off and I look like a caveman now what I normally do is I do a high skin fade like honestly my hair isn't even too long on the sides it's just long to me because I've been always doing a skin fade but yeah I'm looking kind of crazy right now I cut it around every week to two weeks that's a little extreme but you can do that whenever you cut your hair at home so first thing to do as usual is you're gonna want to clean your tremors and you want to lube them up and normally I would just cut my hair naked but since I'm filming a video you know I want anything to be exposed if I were you I would just do a naked sweep everything up afterwards you're gonna wash it all off anyways when you take a shower and you don't have to dirty another pair of shorts alright so for me since I do a high skin fade I start with the trimmer as my lowest setting the reason why I do is because I don't like lining myself up all the way around that's really hard to do if you're gonna use a mirror I'm sure with enough practice you can get it down very easily but I'm not willing to learn I'm not that big into hair anyways I know a lot of people love hairstyles and growing their hair out or cutting their hair everyone there's a lot of people that love hair I'm just not particularly nerdy about that and that's totally cool you know I'm nerdy about you know clothes Star Wars skateboarding you know I'm nerdy about a lot of things we all have our nerdyness in certain areas hair is just not one of them for me the trimmer gets a lot closer than the actual clippers at a zero guard you know with nothing on there so we're gonna start with the sideburns and we go all the way around and create our first line and always when you do you want to flick out you don't you don't want to just push in you want to flick out otherwise you're gonna create really harsh lines it's gonna be hard to you know clean that up and your hair cuz not gonna look real nice look up look up okay now we're gonna start from the back and go all the way around this is probably not the best way to do it skin fade but it's just what I do all right guys so what you want to do is follow the natural shape of your head if you just do a horizontal line surrounding your head it would just look weird your head has a natural curve to it so just follow that also good idea that I've got to do you want to comb the top of your hair all the way and you want to comb your sides down that way the clipper the trimmer can get all of it perfectly just get this all lined up perfectly so the clippers can just and then the top of your head just comb your hair out the way if you have hair clips that'd be ideal but I don't look freaky man look like Dragon Ball Z alright so again we're trying to follow that natural curve of your head but this part is really tricky so what I want you guys to do is just practice with the mirror without cutting your hair yet just the hand motions of using a mirror against another mirror because what you do especially when you're not used to it if you move your hands to the right it's gonna move to the left it's gonna feel super awkward so what you want to do just practice that first before you cut your hair alright so this is the most important step is getting this line even so we're gonna switch hands and we're gonna want to make it as even as possible because this is your first guideline and honestly the first guideline is probably the most important one because if you don't get this right you can really mess up your haircut and you can mess up the fade and I've done that plenty of times it's okay if you go a little bit too high don't worry just that's your new line and just try and make it even from there and a lot of this is just looking at it in the mirror making some adjustments looking at it again until it's perfect and how you like it so next up we're going to throw on the two guard and most clippers come with a lever and how it works is basically if you push the lever down that means it is open which adds a half size to whatever guard you're using if there's no guard that means it's a half and close means you just lift the lever back up and whatever guard is on there it's just the regular size it is if it's a two it's a two and the reason why the lever exists is to help you blend and fade because you know there's no two and a half guard there's no three and a half guard that comes with most kits and so what I'm doing is I'm going straight up going up a little bit higher and then pulling out again you always want to flick out that way you can get a nice blend otherwise it's going to create a really weird line on your head because the natural shape of your head curves in and if you follow in it's just going to look really bad so you want to flick out and the reason why I do this is because I have a start point and an end point and most barbers aren't going to like that but again this is a home haircutting tutorial this ain't no barbershop so I have a start point with the trimmer and an end point with the two and a half and then you want to use the the guards in between to try and blend inside that's just how I like doing it so now we're going to throw in the half guard and you're just going to follow that first line that you created just go up a you know maybe a half inch or an inch or so depending on where you started your skin fade since mine's a little bit high up I don't want to go too crazy with it because we don't have that much real estate especially around my temple area but in the back you can go a little bit higher all right so now we're going to throw on the one guard and now you're just going to follow that line that you created from the half and just want to go up a little bit higher and again you're always trying to stick to following the shape of your head and you're flicking out that way you're not going to create really bad harsh lines that are hard to blend and that's the whole thing with haircuts you just want to make it look even as possible because if one side is more faded than the other it's just going to look really wonky and just looks really weird all right so it gets a little harder here because it's starting to like blend in this is where the fun begins you already technically created another line with the one even though it's starting to fade in a little bit because you're pulling out so you're going to go to the one and a half and go almost to where you ended your two and a half that way you just use the two to blend it afterwards so we're going to do one and a half now remember we're still on the one clip now we're on open so make sure one and a half and you're going to see that the line on the side of your head isn't going to be like you know it's not going to be like that it's starting to slowly become straight and that's what you want if there's any abnormal hair strands it's going to really show especially with the skin fade so just want to make sure it's a straight line and if it curves out you can fix it by just going like a half guy up or something or just flicking out okay that's why you flick out okay so like I just said what is this animal crossing so like I just said your ultimate goals are trying to get like a straight fade because if you have bumps or ridges with your fade it's going to look really bad and that's not what you want as you guys can see the back of my head it's already starting to get that fade going and to keep it safe whenever you're creating a new line it's better to just go a little bit lower than a little bit higher because if you go too high you can't really get that hair back and you're going to have to wait for your next haircut or your fade's going to have to be a little bit higher but if you go too low it's okay you can adjust and you can always go slightly higher and see if you like it or not okay so now we've got the two guard on and remember we ended at a two and a half on the side it's going to be really easy you just don't want to go as high as you did and you just want to kind of blend it in get the straight hairs and then you're going to always do some micro adjustments you might have to put on the one or the half guard again and then you just play with it so we're going to do it to close not to open because too open would be a two and a half which we already did all right guys so we did a zero with the trimmer we did a half already we did a one did a one and a half and we ended it with the two and a half now we just have the two one and then you just want to try and blend it as best as you can kind of the easy part because you can see like little ridges on the side of your face and using the two will blend it if you see other ridges then you'll just use the other guards to blend it and then you just want to make a little bit of micro adjustments and it's okay to go over it the same part multiple times because there's going to be a lot of stray hairs and you just want to do it till it looks even to your eyes and i saw like a little bit of a ridge so we're going to use the half guard again and we're going to try and blend that so it's just a straight line going up my temple and this is just the part where you make a bunch of micro adjustments okay now here comes probably the most important part is you want to get the actual skin fade going because you created a line with the trimmer and this is the last part you're going to want to blend it's the hardest part so what i really recommend you guys do is you flick out with the corner of your clippers because the line you created is curved so if you use a whole blade where it's flat you're going to create really weird lines so if you just use a corner you just flick it out just slightly it's going to get a little bit of hairs it might take a little bit longer and that's how you get rid of that really really harsh line you know if you don't get the fade right with the one or the two it's fine if you don't get the fade right from your skin to the half guard it's definitely going to look like a home haircut and you guys might be asking why i'm using the clippers instead of the trimmers well like i said before the clippers don't get as close to the skin as the trimmer so if you use a trimmer to try and blend it you can create even harsher lines but the zero guard on the clipper doesn't get as close to the skin it gets really close just not as close to the trimmer and it's easier to blend it with the clipper because it doesn't get as close as you guys can see it turned out decent you know the fades not perfect but you know good enough and especially after two days you're not even gonna notice a difference so we're gonna use a trimmer and you want to just line yourself up remember you don't have to do behind your ear or the back of your head because you already did the skin fade with the trimmer so don't have to pull my ear back and do this shit you know i'm saying you know these lines right here by my temple maybe a little bit down right here that's all you have to do so just try and get a straight line just just nick it a tiny bit now we're gonna flick out from right here so we get this line right here and that's pretty much it for me i'm letting my hair grow a little bit but let me give you a quick pointer especially since you know we're all in quarantine why not grow out the top of your head and then just maintain the sides that's what i would do if i were you guys but if you guys if you're as top the hair is too long what you want to do is you want to wet your hair if you have an empty windex bottle you know rinse it out and then put water in there you can spray your head like a barber but i'm saving that windex just in case because it has alcohol and it'll kill some bacteria during quarantine grab your comb this will stretch out the hairs and then this is what you want to do you grab your shears so what you want to do is you want to grab some strands of hair stretch it out completely then trim what you want to trim off right so you just created a new line now you want to grab some more hair along with this that you just cut off that way you already have a line and then you already can see the extra strands and you just trim that off and match that line next see how this is or this is my guideline right here and then you're gonna trim off some more you can do that all the way around your head then i have these trimming shears basically they have teeth in it stop focusing on my face basically they have teeth in it and it's not going to cut all your hair it's going to cut little pieces of it which means you're going to have a lot of texture so some some hairs will be shorter some hairs will be longer and it makes your hair cut a little bit a lot a little bit nicer whenever you style it so you're just gonna you know trim in random spots nothing too crazy so that is the haircut again i would make sure you are necked you know i'm wearing shorts so i don't expose myself but i would do it necked hop in the shower you wash all this hair off it's not going to clog your drain don't even trip if so just buy some drain oh this haircut i'm not very good on the left side of the head if a barber was a 10 out of 10 this is like a seven and eight maybe passable and that's totally cool that's what i'm all about i'm gonna take a shower style the hair we'll check out the full haircut afterwards all right so right after the shower i grab a razor with a single blade to basically line up my forehead because you know most barbers they use either a hot towel or cream that opens up the pores when you take a hot shower your pores are open and you can easily shave your hair and i like using the razor instead of clippers because clippers are always clipping right with the razor if you push up on the hair it's okay it's not going to cut anything unless you actually shave it but with the clipper if you just push up a little bit too far it's going to look really bad so i just recommend using a razor for that all right guys that's a haircut it doesn't look too bad when you look at the front but on the side you know there could be some improvements but again it's a diy haircut like give me a break come on you're cutting your hair on your own it's not going to be barbershop worthy but it's decent and by day two it's going to look it's going to look just fine i don't know what do you guys think leave a comment down below and if you guys found this video helpful or informative make sure you turn that like button blue let the youtube algorithm gods bless this channel with love and i hope you guys try this out honestly you save a lot of money it's actually a good skill to know especially during these times and for you kids out there you can turn this into a side hustle cut your friend's hair that way you can pay for your own haircut i don't know up to you guys but yeah um keep practicing you know i'm still practicing even though i've been doing this for years i'm still not the best i've gone to the point where i don't care if it doesn't look as perfect because like i said by day two it's going to look just fine follow me on instagram if you guys haven't already at fly with johnny's high and until then stay fly stay healthy cut your hair do it it's fun i'm out peace you know make sure you guys clean up your mess use a broom sweep this up and if you're not sweeping with this you know type of bamboo asian broom are you really sweeping