The next item of business is First Minister's Questions, and at question number one I call Douglas Ross. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Last night, the Deputy First Minister was forced to admit to this Parliament that the UK Covid Inquiry Centre requested the Scottish Government for messages related to the pandemic in February of this year. But last week, the Deputy First Minister claimed that the request was made just over a month ago. First Minister, those two statements are clearly contradictory, so how can they both be true? First Minister, the Deputy First Minister was clear on her statement, and you can check the official record for this, of course, when she made her statement last week. She did mention that there were initial requests from the inquiry. In terms of my own response to Anasawa, I was talking about a very particular issue around specific WhatsApp groups, but let me be clear that the Scottish Government clearly interpreted the requests from the inquiry in a way that was too narrow. For any shortcomings on our behalf that have caused any distress to the families of those who have been bereaved by Covid, I apologise unreservedly as I did last week, and I reiterate and re-emphasise that apology this week. What we have done on the back, of course, of the request from the inquiry, has ensured that the Government has released 14,000 messages to the inquiry. When it comes to my own witness statement, that includes reams of WhatsApp messages unredacted. That is, of course, in very stark contrast to a Prime Minister who not only dragged the inquiry through courts but has refused to hand over his own WhatsApp messages. That is the third week that I have raised at First Minister's questions. If the SNP does not like it, I do not think that they would have liked the First Minister's attempt at an excuse there, because the First Minister peddled the same false claims as the Deputy First Minister. Let us be very clear what he said to this chamber last week. Hamza Yousaf said, and I quote, the messages were asked for in September just a matter of weeks ago. That is what he said, black and white in the official record. But back in February, the UK Covery inquiry asked for, and I quote, internal and external emails, text messages or WhatsApp messages held by the Scottish Government. The evidence is clear. Will he admit that in last week's session that he did not tell the truth? I absolutely refute that. I have told the chamber that, of course, they can check the official record. Clearly, I was talking about specific WhatsApp groups. Where I do accept fully from the inquiry is that we have interpreted their requests too narrowly. Subsequently, having done so, we have then supplied 14,000 messages to the inquiry. In my witness statement, I have handed over the WhatsApp messages that I have unredacted to the inquiry, in stark contrast to the UK Government, that took the inquiry to court, lost that court battle and the Prime Minister refuses to hand over his WhatsApp messages. Once again, I said to Douglas Ross, we do not fear scrutiny. I suspect his party. He absolutely does. That is a very brave answer from the First Minister, when his predecessor and others in Government have been deleting messages running away from scrutiny. Let us look very carefully, because the First Minister seems to be struggling with this, as to what was said last week. The Deputy First Minister told Parliament that it has been just over a month since messages were requested. The First Minister claimed in this chamber that the messages were asked for in September just a matter of weeks ago. That is what was said. That is in the official record of this Parliament. The two most senior people in the Scottish Government stated that the UK Covid inquiry only requested the messages in September. It was not a slip of the tongue. It was not an honest mistake. It was deliberate. Now the UK Covid inquiry, tasked with getting answers for grieving families, has had to demand that the SNP comes to this Parliament to tell the truth about the timeline of when the requests were made. So why did Humza Yousaf and the SNP make these false claims? I would urge Douglas Ross to once again read the statement from the Deputy First Minister, which, of course, says in black and white—well, if you have, if Douglas Ross has, he will see in black and white that the Deputy First Minister references initial requests. It is entirely understandable and, of course, appropriate for the inquiry to ask us to then provide the absolute full context of requests, which we did without any hesitation, without arguing back with the inquiry to ensure that we were transparent and accountable. I understand why Douglas Ross wants to obsess about the process. We have, of course, handed over the 14,000 messages. I have handed over reams of WhatsApp messages from myself, and I absolutely acknowledge the distress that has been caused to families that have been bereaved by Covid and apologise unreservedly to them. While the process is important, the substance of those messages are important too. I can say with total confidence, even though I have not seen some of the messages from individual witnesses, what I can say with total confidence is that there was not a single Scottish Government minister who said, let the bodies pile up high. That, of course, was none other than Boris Johnson, a man that Douglas Ross served under in government. A man that Douglas Ross, of course, defended to the hilt. A man that Douglas Ross claimed was honest that Douglas Ross should be ashamed of himself for his defence of Boris Johnson. Hamza Yousaf should not just be ashamed of himself for that answer, but the way he is treating this Parliament with contempt and the families of grieving victims. Let us be very clear. The UK Covid inquiry repeatedly asked the SNP Government for WhatsApp messages. It asked if the messages existed last year. It asked for the messages themselves in February of this year and again in March and in July and in August, but the First Minister and Deputy First Minister claim that none of this ever happened. They have been caught red-handed in a cover-up. They knowingly told this chamber statements that were false. Is not it beyond doubt that Hamza Yousaf and Shona Robison misled this Parliament? Not the case. I refer Douglas Ross once again to the official record where the Deputy First Minister in black and white talks about initial requests. What I absolutely fully accept is that, as a Government, we interpreted those requests too narrowly. What we have done to take corrective action is to make sure that we submitted 14,000 messages. What I have done, of course, is to make sure that I have handed over the messages that I have in unredacted form. Let us not take away from the substance instead of the process issues that Douglas Ross is so obsessed with. We had this week Simon Case describing working in Boris Johnson's Government as taming wild animals. That, of course, was a Government that Douglas Ross was a member of. I cannot even read out the messages that Dominic Cummings handed to the inquiry. However, we heard from that inquiry. Douglas Ross will not want to hear this. I can understand why he is trying to shout it down. This is an exceptionally important point. In the inquiry in the last couple of weeks, we have heard that there was a deliberate attempt by the UK Government to exclude devolved Governments from decision making. During the early days of the pandemic, Douglas Ross was a minister within the Scotland office. Did he purposely try to exclude devolved Administrations and, indeed, this Government from decision making? At a time when people needed, right across the UK, serious leadership, during a serious time, they had wild animals, according to Simon Case, running the UK Government. Breif families and their lawyers are watching these exchanges, and I do not think that we should use Boris Johnson as our major success in Scotland. It could not be clearer that the First Minister has lost control of his Government and that he appears to have misled Parliament on more than one occasion. So let us focus on the substance, because this matters. The Covid pandemic was our country's most difficult period in living memory. That is why learning the lessons and getting the answers are so important. We were promised full transparency and co-operation by this Government, but they have failed. What such messages are not the only evidence that the Government is withholding from the inquiry. The legal advice that the Government has provided has not been complete and, in some cases, almost entirely redacted. The inquiry's lawyer has said that this means that the inquiry is constrained from fully carrying out its function. First Minister, why is your Government hiding the legal advice and not cooperating with the inquiry? Whatever information we can provide, and when it comes to legal advice, obviously Anasawa knows that I cannot comment on legal advice. Where there is, of course, the ability to hand over legal advice unredacted, then I would expect the Scottish Government to do so. Of course I am more than happy after this exchange of First Minister's questions to have the appropriate conversations with the law officers, but of course we have to ensure that legal privilege is maintained where that is, our legal responsibility to do so. Anasawa says that we are not complying. I disagree with that whole heartedly. We have handed over 14,000 WhatsApp messages. I have handed over the WhatsApp messages. I have an unredacted form. I have not decided what is relevant. I have handed all of my messages over to the inquiry for the inquiry to decide what is relevant. Anasawa is absolutely right. Those families who have been bereaved by Covid absolutely want answers. What I can say with the 19,000 documents that we have handed over, with the 14,000 WhatsApp messages that we have handed over, and with the WhatsApp messages that I have handed over, we are a Government that intends absolutely and unequivocally to fully co-operate with both the Scottish and the UK public inquiries. The First Minister says that he is co-operating, but I am not sure if he doesn't understand or doesn't know in terms of the question that I asked him, because he clearly hasn't still read the transcript from the Covid inquiry. Got it there, we will read it. First Minister, read it because the council to the inquiry has made it clear that they have asked twice on 3 August and 14 August for unredacted legal advice and they have not received it. That does not seem to be a fight that the Covid inquiry is having with the UK Tory Government, because there were major decisions during the pandemic that presumably had legal advice, such as lockdowns, discharge to care homes and do not resuscitate notices. That is why this is so important. Hiding this crucial evidence is in a front to every victim of Covid, their families and everyone who lived under lockdowns and closures. In reference to the First Minister's first answer, the Government has handed over legal advice in full to judicial inquiries before, the trams inquiry, the infected blood inquiry and the Scottish child abuse inquiry. The secrecy and evasion must stop will he hand over the legal advice in full to the Covid inquiry? In Anna Sauer's question, he gets to the nub of the issue, which is that the Government has co-operated with inquiries fully in the past. Where we are able to release legal advice, we will absolutely do that. Anna Sauer has to accept that there is first of all a process that has to be gone through. Secondly, each bit of legal advice has to be looked at on a case by case basis. That is why he is absolutely right that we have provided legal advice in previous inquiries. Where we can do so in this inquiry, I absolutely expect every single document, including legal advice, to be handed over to the UK Covid inquiry and to the Scottish Covid inquiry as well. I go back to the central point. Quite rightly, for those families who have been bereaved by Covid, we want to know whether we co-operate. 19,000 documents have been handed over. 14,000 messages, mainly messages, have been handed over. My messages, as well as messages that I know of other ministers who have been public about the messages that they have handed over, have been submitted to the inquiry. We take seriously our responsibility not just to provide documents, but where possible, the legal advice. Of course, there are legal issues around legal privilege, which have to be considered. Anna Sauer It is clear from that answer again that the First Minister is sinking, not swimming and is completely and utterly out of his depth. It is not me saying that the legal advice has been redacted and not handed over. It is the Covid inquiry on 3 and 14 August, asking for the information and still not provided by this Government. That is what that message is deleted, legal advice redacted and a different story every day. Even now, questions remain that the First Minister refuses to answer. He will not tell us how many people have failed to comply with their do not destroy notices, even though the inquiry says that there is no confidentiality issue. There is more. It has been reported that SNP ministers and special advisers use SNP and private email accounts to communicate. What is not clear is that those emails have been handed in full to the Covid inquiry. Can the First Minister tell us in the spirit of full transparency if any emails from SNP accounts have been handed to the Covid inquiry? If so, how many and if not, why not? Can I remind the First Minister again that this is about families and those who have lost loved ones during Covid? Before he answers, can I remind him that we need accurate answers the first time? I am not arguing with him about the point that the information has been redacted. I am saying to him that the reason why it has been redacted is because of issues that I can confirm around legal privilege. Of course, discussion would have to take place with our law officers in relation to what can be unredacted. Where we can absolutely send information unredacted is my full expectation as the individual who leads the Government that that information is provided in full in unredacted form. To give him an example of that, the way that I am leading by example, is that the WhatsApp messages that I have handed over have been handed over unredacted. The information that has been provided has been provided by me in unredacted form. As for any other form of communication and any other email address or informal or formal communication, it is fully my expectation that that information is handed over. Of course, I do not have sight of individual ministers or witnesses' statements. From a corporate position, of course, I can confirm that any relevant information that we hold will be handed over. Let me say once again that for the families of those who have been bereaved by Covid, this Government will fully comply with both the UK inquiry and the Scottish public inquiry. Question 3, Gillian Mackay. To ask the First Minister how the Scottish Government is supporting renters who are struggling with the cost of living. I am acutely aware of the pressure-facing renters. I am pleased that this Parliament voted to extend the cost of living act for a final six months to March, which continues to provide protection and reassurance to renters by capping private sector rents. That is alongside our agreement with social landlords to keep rent increases this year well below inflation. Scotland is leading the way in support for tenants. This year, we are making £83.7 million available to local authorities to spend on discretionary housing payments more per person than any other UK nation. That is why I repeat my call to the UK Government to scrap its on-going freeze on local housing allowance rates, which hits hardest on tenants on the lowest incomes. Gillian Mackay. I thank the First Minister for that answer and, like him, I strongly support our emergency legislation to cap rents and reduce evictions led by Patrick Harvie last year. I welcome last week's court of session decision to reject a challenge to that legislation, saying that the challenge fell far short of what is required in order to demonstrate that the act disproportionately interferes with the property rights of landlords. With that court decision in mind, does the First Minister agree with me that it is time for landlord bodies to accept the overwhelming need for action to control high rents and to improve tenants' rights? Work constructively with this Government on the housing bill when it has introduced this parliamentary year. I welcome the court's decision last week. I want to work constructively with all stakeholders to deliver a system of rent control that works for Scotland. I am pleased that a number of landlord representatives bodies are working with us through the private rented sector stakeholder group, and a range of organisations representing the views of tenants, investors and developers are represented. I am keen that this approach continues as we move towards the introduction of the bill. The Deputy First Minister, myself, Mary McAllen, had a good session with our investor panel last week. It was made very clear from that investor panel that those who want to invest in property and affordable housing will do so in places that have rent controls. We have seen that in fact in Europe. We are keen to engage with everybody in relation to this very issue. There is no other Government in the UK that is as ambitious as this Government with our emergency legislation. That was on top of course of our legislation to end no-fault evictions in 2016, a move that the UK Government is now also considering. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government is doing to alleviate poverty in Scotland in light of reports that the UK is in violation of international law in relation to poverty levels. The Scottish Government is allocating almost £3 billion to support policies that tackle poverty and protect people as far as possible during the on-going cost of living crisis this year. That includes delivering a game-changing Scottish child payment, tripling our fuel and security fund to £30 million. While the Westminster Government signed up to prolong austerity, it will continue to use every single lever available to lift people out of poverty. We know the devastating impact that UK Government measures are having on driving more people into poverty. That is why it is frankly no surprise to hear the UN's special rapporteur on poverty state that the UK Government is in violation of international law over poverty levels. However, that is shocking. We agree with the UN that universal credit is grossly insufficient. That is why we continue to call on the UK Government to introduce an essential guarantee that ensures that social security adequately covers the cost of vital essentials. Yesterday, the Trusill Trust released astonishing figures showing that 1.5 million emergency food parcels were distributed across the UK between April and September. The most parcels that the network has ever provided over the summer months—a 16 per cent increase UK-wide but mitigated to 9 per cent in Scotland. That is further evidence of the utter misery caused by what the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty called the Tory's quote, grossly insufficient welfare system. Does the First Minister agree with me that the UK Government must introduce a universal credit essentials guarantee immediately and that the only way to protect people in Scotland from Westminster's cruel policies is for this Parliament to have the full powers of an independent country? Collette Stevenson articulates powerfully about some of the evidence from the Trusill Trust and all we get is groans and moans from the Conservative benches. When the Trusill Trust is mentioned or poverty is mentioned, that tells its own story, does it not? I agree with Collette Stevenson that the UK Government must urgently fix the fundamental flaws with universal credit that are driving destitution and driving up food bank use. The Trusill Trust report is astonishing, as Collette Stevenson says. It makes clear that the UK Government's social security system is one of the driving factors pushing people towards hunger. That is why I support this. The Government supports the calls for an essential guarantee to be applied to universal credit and other reserve benefits, ensuring that social security benefits adequately cover the cost of vital essentials. Wouldn't it be better, far better, if we were able to extricate ourselves from a Westminster system that is causing such immense harm to our people? Far better have we stopped having to take money from health education transport to mitigate Westminster harm and instead had the full powers of an independent country not just to reduce poverty but to eradicate poverty. Question number five, Miles Briggs. Thank you, Presiding Officer. To ask the First Minister what support the Scottish Government is offering to NHS Lothian to contact the parents and guardians of over 23,000 children who reportedly may have received substantive testing to identify deafness, including support to identify other young children who have not received the required standard of auditory response testing. First Minister.  Miles Briggs and I met when I was previously Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care when this issue first emerged and I understand the anger not just of the families and the children involved but those advocating for them. The Scottish Government is working in partnership with NHS Lothian to ensure continued progress against the actions of the British Academy of Audiology report. The BAA advised that not all of the 23,000 children seen during the period between 2009 and 2018 required to be reviewed. Those who did were offered a retest by NHS Lothian based on the timeline association with the Scottish Public Service ombudsman investigation and the sample size of the BAA reviews. I understand that families are being directly contacted and offered a meeting with the NHS Lothian senior management team to discuss and agree an appropriate care plan with a focus on ensuring the right support is in place. Miles Briggs. I thank the First Minister for that answer. The series of failures in NHS Lothian that have denied children with hearing loss, the chance to be identified early and receive hearing and speech and language therapy has been catastrophic for children and families here in Edinburgh. NHS Lothian has never confirmed how many parents or guardians have been contacted or indeed how many of the 23,000 children have been reassessed to date. It is unacceptable that families here in Edinburgh are having to fight for their children to access health services and the educational support needs which they will need as well. I ask the First Minister if the Scottish Government will today agree to all parents and guardians being contacted and if needed urgently reassessed. Given the many outstanding concerns that have been contained within the inquiries to date, what consideration have ministers given to the need for a public inquiry into the audiology scandal here in NHS Lothian and other cases that are being reported in other health boards? There are a number of questions that Miles Briggs asks me and I will ensure that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care provides full detail in terms of those questions. In relation to how many families have been contacted, I will ensure that if we can provide that information that it is provided to Miles Briggs, my understanding of the BAA review that was done is that they ended up stratifying and ensuring that those children affected were in various categories, seven categories. Of course, those children where there were significant concerns reported were brought in for additional retesting or indeed there was additional clinical oversight given to their particular case. In terms of all of the children, the 23,000 children, I will ensure that Miles Briggs has given more information about that stratification, that categorisation, but I want him to have a level of assurance that those who are most seriously impacted, therefore highest at risk, were indeed given additional clinical care. In terms of lessons learned, it is a very important point that Miles Briggs raises. We ensured that the lessons from this unacceptable catalogue of failures were cascaded to health boards right across the country. Of course, we continued to make sure that health boards are vigilant to learning any of the lessons from this very sorry episode, but I will ensure that the information about how many children have been seen, if we are able to provide that information and make sure that it is provided to Miles Briggs. The issue that we face is that, despite detailed answers, there are continued to be parents who feel that they have been missed and who struggle to get help. What we do know is that the 23,000 children are potentially affected, but less than 2,000 have had a detailed review. What work is being taken to ensure that the sampling techniques that have been used are comprehensive? Do we know what number of children on the basis of that sampling have yet to be identified? Do we also have to look at the time period, because nobody before 2017 has been looked at at all? I will ensure that we give full answers to Daniel Johnson on the 23,000 children. Of course, I understand that that was not necessarily taken by NHS Lothian, but we know by the British Academy of Audiology that it designed and conducted the audit. As I have said, the children were categorised into various different categories, with, of course, those who were the most high-risk then being given further clinical oversight. If there are particular parents and families who feel that their child has not had the appropriate level of attention or care and are experiencing significant impacts or any impact, frankly, because of this sorry episode, I would ask that Daniel Johnson does bring that to the attention of the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, and I am sure that he will take that up with NHS Lothian. I am sure that Daniel Johnson has the contact detail, but I am more than happy to pass the contact detail on to Daniel Johnson of the appropriate individuals in NHS Lothian who I know are taking this matter with the utmost seriousness. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's response is to reports. The Scottish Water has issued bonus payments to executives in excess of public sector payrolls. The criteria for paying bonuses to Scottish Water's executive members are agreed by ministers ahead of each regulatory period. Those are in line with public sector payrolls, which state that we need to attract and retain highly experienced personnel to run vital public services. The current remuneration package for the CEO and senior management team is significantly smaller than that, paid by comparable utilities both in terms of salary and indeed bonus incentives. My apologies. I think that we can afford Pauli McNeill a supplementary question. It was reported this week that three executives of Scottish Water had received nearly 1.1 million bonuses in 2021, but that is on top of a six-figure salary. Despite the fact that there have been 14,000 sewage spillages in last year alone, which begs the question why they did qualify for performance bonuses. However, the same executives are withholding a pay rise from their workers unless staff accept a new pay structure and the poorest would be losing as much as 5,000. I have to ask the First Minister what has gone wrong here that a public sector body is paying public sector executives who seem to be allot into themselves, paying themselves vast amounts of money, where there are existing failures and customers to be asked to pay even more for the infrastructure. Can the First Minister justify that in a public sector body? I think that Pauli McNeill's characterisation of Scottish Water is deeply unfair. First and foremost, I understand when it comes to the pay negotiations that these are on-going. My understanding is that they were on-going until the early hours of the morning, and I am pleased that discussions are on-going. I do hope that strike action can be averted even at this last hour, because this Government, of course, has a very strong track record of when it comes to ensuring that workers are paid fairly. On remuneration, I had mentioned that Scottish Water has to be competitive. If I looked at, for example, the CEO's salary, it is, of course, a high salary of £245,000. Compare that to Welsh Water, where the base salary is £341,000, or United Utilities, where the base salary is £971,000. The reason why I mentioned that is because those are from salary comparison tables for £2223. We have to make sure that Scottish Water is able to attract the best talent right across the country and, indeed, right across the world. When it comes to the bonus element of any remuneration package, bonuses are only paid in the event of outperformance of demand targets that are, and this is crucial, verified by independent regulators. The First Minister will be aware of the damning report on drinking water by the drinking water quality regulator for Scotland. Sue Pech, the regulator, called out a backlog of maintenance, neglect of the maintenance of assets and said that this posed a, quote, real danger to human health and is issued in enforcement order. The First Minister is accountable for Scottish Water, so what is the First Minister going to do to ensure that this enforcement notice is carried out and that this backlog is properly dealt with? We will ensure that Scottish Water invests significant amounts of money over the coming period. In fact, Scottish Water will invest £4.5 billion across 21 to 27 period. That investment programme is supported by Government borrowing of up to £1.03 billion and £880 million was invested in 2020-23 upgrading essential treatment works, water supply and sewer networks. In terms of Scotland's water quality, we know from SEPA that 87 per cent of Scotland's entire water environment is assessed as having either a high or good classification for water quality. In terms of the enforcement notice, which Stephen Kerr is right to raise, it is my full expectation that Scottish Water will comply. There is much demand, of course, for supplementary questions. If we can keep our questions and responses concise, we will get more members in. I call Willie Rennie. Sewage dumped 14,000 times last year. Fecal bacteria 50 times the legal limit in lower Largo. Dry sewage dumping in St Andrews. How on earth can the First Minister justify such whooping bonuses when those Scottish Water bosses are responsible for such failure? I have just mentioned the fact that 87 per cent of Scotland's entire water environment is assessed by SEPA as having high or good classification. I have also made the point, which Willie Rennie clearly did not listen to, that when it comes to the remuneration of the awarding of bonuses, they are for where performance targets have been met and exceeded, and they are independently verified by regulators. It is important that, for a public company, a publicly owned company such as Scottish Water, they are able to compete. The CEO's base salary is far lower than many other comparative water companies or utility companies across the UK. We move to general and constituency supplementaries, and I call Rona Mackay. The news of 450 jobs being cut at reach PLC is deeply concerning and speaks to a wider issue of resourcing and journalism. Does the First Minister agree that with senior executives withdrawing bonuses in the millions of pounds while hardworking journalists are thrown in the scrap heap, the real loser in this is our very democracy? Yes, I agree with that wholeheartedly. Reports of any job losses are, of course, concerning, especially for the workers involved and, indeed, their families. More than that, in this particular case, we know that free and vibrant independent press is the very bedrock of a functioning democracy. We want to do all we can to support the sustainability and the diversity of journalism in Scotland. We urge media organisations to be investing in the sort of quality journalism that is so important in an open society, not making the cuts that have been reported and that Rona Mackay is right to raise today. There is a protest happening outside Parliament today for new routes home to recognise those who are locked up in hospital. I welcome families of these patients in the chamber today, including constituents of mine, Tracy and Natalie, mother and sister of Kyle, who have been locked up for 14 years. Hundreds of autistic people and people with learning disabilities are stuck inappropriately in out-of-area placements, hospitals and secure units, dozens of whom have been there for over a decade and a millennium of lost years in captivity. As we approach the March 2024 deadline in becoming home report, can the First Minister say what the Scottish Government has done to get these patients home? I credit Alexander Burnett, who raised his issue on many occasions on behalf of his constituents. We are, as a Government, absolutely committed to delivering the coming home recommendations to reduce inappropriate hospital stays and out-of-area placements, experienced by people with learning disabilities and complex care needs. What have we done? I can ensure that we get a fuller answer to Alexander Burnett, but, to give him some examples, we have launched a new dynamic support register, which is one of the very key recommendations to improve local case management of people with learning disabilities and complex care needs. That is a very important step towards achieving the coming home vision, which will help local areas to plan for people with learning disabilities and complex care needs to live in their home communities. We have also developed a practitioner peer support network in a national support panel to support local areas to share best practice, and we have provided £20 million under our community living change fund to integration authorities to design community-based solutions that avoid or limit future hospital use and, indeed, out-of-area placements. We all want—I know Alexander Burnett will agree with this—to ensure that people are supported to be in a home that is absolutely right for them and is close to their families and in their communities as possible. Jackie Baillie The First Minister may be aware that NICE and the SMC have determined that cystic fibrosis drugs that are literally life-saving will no longer be available on the NHS, because they consider the drugs to be clinically effective but not cost effective. It is important to say, though, that those already receiving or can be, SIMCeVie and CAFTRIO will continue to do so, but new patients will not. The First Minister knows that cystic fibrosis is a life limiting condition. So can I ask the First Minister will he meet with CF families and work with the UK government to negotiate a more acceptable cost from the drug manufacturer Vertex to literally save lives? First Minister. Can I thank Jackie Belly for raising a very important point indeed and of course we will continue our engagement with drug companies, with the UK government and of course the cabinet secretary for health regularly meets with families that have been impacted and affected. What I would say to Jackie Belly is that existing patients, of course, it is important to make this point and to reiterate the point that Jackie Belly made, existing patients on a treatment for cystic fibrosis will continue to have access to the existing treatments after NICE has issued its final recommendations irrespective of the outcome. However, I know that there are discussions that are on-going, and I know that the Scottish Medicines Consortium is collaborating with NICE on a joint multiple technology appraisal of several cystic fibrosis. Medicines, including CAF Trio, the SMC will publish final recommendations aligned with NICE guidance for health boards in Scotland to consider. However, I think that the suggestion from Jackie Belly is certainly one that we will seek to take up in relation to those conversations and engagement with the drug companies themselves. I was delighted to see the new and updated British Sign Language Action Plan released this past week, and I want to thank the First Minister for his help and support with my continued work in this area. Can I ask the First Minister how this plan will support British Sign Language use in Scotland? The whole chamber can recognise the incredible work that Can Adam has done in relation to British Sign Language. I want to pay tribute to her efforts in this regard. We are absolutely committed to making Scotland the best place in the world for British Sign Language users to live, to work, to visit and, indeed, to learn. The BSL national plan 23-29 contains 45 actions to help us to meet this very ambition. We recognise that, to deliver our aims, we need to ensure that the BSL community is at the very heart of the decision-making process. That is why we are establishing an implementation advisory group to support this plan. Hold us to account but also to inform our thinking in the delivery of each action. This group will be made up of organisations representing BSL users, the deaf and the deaf-blind community. It is important to note that this is not a static plan that will continue to evolve to ensure that our actions tackle the barriers that BSL users face in their everyday lives. Alarming figures from Fife have shown that violence and bullying within our schools is at unprecedented levels. The local authority staff reported almost 3,500 physical attacks and threats in just the last year. 6,480 pupils reported being bullied during the same time period. The response from Fife Council's anti-bullying policy is that punishing bullying is counterproductive, so nothing will happen. First Minister, do you agree with the policy and what do you have to say to the thousands of young people in Fife who are victims of bullying? I think that it is really important for an issue of this magnitude that we are characterising the situation absolutely correctly and accurately. Ross McAll, of course, is right to raise the very worrying issues and concerns that we have about violence and bullying in schools. I know that the education secretary has had two summits on school behaviour and there is another one that I think Drew very shortly. She has also met parents, with teaching unions, children's organisations and representatives right across the education sector. On 25 October last month, attendees shared their experiences of relationships and behaviour approaches and discussed potential solutions to ensure safe and consistent environments in schools. As I said, that followed on from the very first meeting that took place in September. The discussions at the events have been constructive and there have been some very good suggestions that the education secretary will seek to take up. In relation to more specific issues that Ross McAll may have, I would ask her to continue to engage with the education secretary on those points. Paul Sweeney, community link, worker poster set to be reduced from 64 to 42 in Glasgow from next year. One Glasgow GP this week told the BBC that these cuts could result in lives being lost. I understand that the Government has put a funding offer to the health and social care partnership in Glasgow, but that was rejected. Can the First Minister please provide an update on discussions with the health and social care partnership and advise what options remain to save these critical and cost effective roles in some of our most deprived communities? Can I join with Paul Sweeney on recognising the importance of community link workers? All of us that have community link workers in our constituencies have seen the invaluable service that they provide. Every single GP practice that I have spoken to sees them as a valuable and critical member of their staff. Paul Sweeney was right to recognise that the Scottish Government has offered additional funding. That does not seem to be enough according to the Glasgow health and social care partnership in order to continue with the full provision of community links workers. We are continuing to engage with them and expect to be able to update Paul Sweeney and those in the chamber that have an interest in this, hopefully at some point next week. The First Minister will be aware of the serious fireworks-related disorder in Nidry just a few days ago. Constituents have written to me and told me about how terrified they were during that time. Will the First Minister join me in condemning the violence, particularly the attacks on our emergency services? I would also like to take this opportunity to stress that incidents such as those should not be used to talk down the communities that I represent. Will the First Minister agree with me that a ban on fireworks is only possible with the full powers of independence and that the Government should implement the Fireworks Act 2022 as a matter of urgency? Will he consider additional resources to hotspot areas such as my constituency of Edinburgh Eastern? First and foremost, we condemn, in the strongest possible manner, the violence and the reckless actions that we saw, not just in the member's constituency but in other parts of the country as well. Let me also then pay tribute to our emergency workers, in particular our fire officers and police officers who were on the front line, and say just how despicable it is, of course, that they were under attack in this way. In relation to a wholesale ban, it is my understanding that it is not within our competency, but we will seek to do more. Whatever we can do within legislation, we will seek to do. That is why we have brought forward legislation and regulation over the years, of course, most recently in relation to the fireworks and pyrotechnics article act 2022. We will continue to work with our local authorities to see what more we can do in relation to additional resource. That is a fair request. What I would say finally is that it should not require Government legislation or regulation to know that you should not be firing fireworks at police officers or fire officers. Those who are responsible, of course, my hope is that, as the police investigation is on-going, if they are found to be guilty of such behaviour, they feel the full force of the law. You are responsible for protecting the reputation of this Parliament, but last night it was reported that an MSP in this chamber racked up a bill of £11,000 through data roaming charges whilst on holiday, a tab that has been picked up entirely by the taxpayer. For clarity, that is £65 an hour, 24 hours a day. For the seven days, he was on holiday in Far Flung, Morocco. This incident has damaged the reputation of the Scottish Parliament and it is incumbent on you, Presiding Officer, to repair and defend this. Therefore, I urge you to conduct a full investigation into this matter, including publishing the full bill that was incurred by Mr Matheson, to explore why the Parliament has appeared to break its own rules of a cap of £200 on roaming charges by paying the bill entirely and exploring whether Mr Matheson himself has broken any parliamentary rules by claiming for such a large sum. Parliament seeks your advice, Presiding Officer, and our constituents seek your reassurance. Thank you, Mr Hoy. Of course, points of order are intended to confirm that correct procedures are or have been followed, therefore this matter is not a point of order. However, if the member wishes to write to me on this matter, I will provide a response. I am very grateful, Presiding Officer, for students to rule 8.17. I would like to raise a point of order about how we can seek pursuant to rule 13.2, a ministerial statement from the Scottish Government law officer regarding questions and answers that were received today during First Minister's questions. There have been specific questions raised about redacted and unredacted legal advice that has been sought from the Covid inquiry, and it should be for the law officer to represent what the facts of this case are with regard to the Scottish Government. Thank you, Mr Whitfield, for his point of order. Under rule 13.2.2, a minister wishing to make an urgent statement may give notice to me, and if I consider the matter sufficiently urgent, I can make an adjustment to the business programme. As yet, I have received no such request. At this point, a point of order. My apologies, Presiding Officer, and are you aware yet of any requests being made by Scottish Minister to make an urgent statement? At this point, as I said, perhaps Mr Whitfield did not pick me up. At this point, I have not received any such request. Thank you. Now there will be a short suspension to allow those leaving the chamber and the public gallery to do so before we move to Members Business.


Melanoma is one of the most common and dangerous types of skin cancer. Deep learning and computer vision have enabled the development of AI systems that can quickly and accurately identify if a patient has malignant cells. These systems are important because they reduce the risk of fatality by providing early detection. Additionally, AI has the potential to revolutionize healthcare in other areas such as melanoma diagnosis. Researchers used two Inception V3 and Inception Resonate V2 strategies to train their model on the HAM 10000 dataset, which contained a limited number of skin cancer samples. They then fine-tuned the feature extraction layers that had been frozen before adding new top layers that were trained. The resulting models outperformed previous studies with an accuracy rate of 0.89 and 0.91 respectively. This article was authored by Gata Alwakid, Walaguta, Mamunahumian, and others. We are article.tv. Links in the description below.


So today I'm going to be showing you the coolest thing I've ever found on Linux and if that doesn't entice you I don't know what will because I found a lot of really cool things on Linux over the years And I've shared a lot of them with you But today I think takes the cake today. I'm going to be talking about Disturbox now you've probably heard of Disturbox before a lot of youtubers have made videos on this before and I Kind of got left in the dust because I heard the term container and I was like yeah You know, I don't really care about containers. I'm not a developer What could I possibly need a can container before because I hear container? I think Kubernetes and podman and and all these words that I just what do they even mean? You know, I don't know what a container is outside of flat packs. I couldn't tell you I can barely even spell the word that's not true, but you get the idea, right? I don't I don't know anything about containers other than the but you know bait the most basic idea of them And beyond that, I don't really have a need for containers, right? I just have never truly thought that I did But I was a fool okay, you know, I Have been missing out on Disturbox and it is a shame because Disturbox is really really freaking cool Now today I'm going to be taking you through a couple of the features of Disturbox And when I say a couple what I mean is just a couple because there are so many more things that you can do With Disturbox than the few things that I'm going to show you today I highly recommend after you watch this video and give it a thumbs up I highly recommend you head on over to the website, which I'll link to in the video description right below the like button Damn it Matt. Stop that You should head on over to their website and give the documentation a look because the documentation is fantastic And it really does tell you a lot about the things that you can do With Disturbox that I'm not going to cover today, but I'm gonna show you a few things so First what is Disturbox? Why am I going crazy over it? Well, the idea here is that it is a container that allows you to run a Linux distribution inside of it basic idea, although I'm sure the technology Technology stuff behind it is very complicated well beyond me, but the idea is fairly simple. You can run a Contained environment usually with a Linux distribution inside of it on top of another bare metal Linux distro So that's the idea. So for example, I'm on Debian on my main machine right now If I wanted to I could use Disturbox to create an arch Linux container and run arch inside of that container now At that level if we just stopped right there, that's cool enough But what would I use it for right? Why do I need access to arch on top of Debian? I could just create a virtual machine for that Well, Disturbox creates many different advantages over a virtual machine first of all and the biggest one probably is Shared hardware support. So if you wanted to have access to your USB stuff You could have access to your USB right inside of the container without doing anything, right? You don't have to do anything special like you would if you were wanting to do so in a virtual machine and the big one And I can't even begin to tell you how big this is is GPU pass through if you've ever tried to pass a GPU from your host machine to a virtual machine You'll know that it is a pain in the ass It is not an easy process and it gets harder when you're talking about, you know, multiple different GPUs and all this stuff It's not an easy process with Disturbox all that stuff is automatic now It's automatic when you have an AMD or an Intel GPU if you have an Nvidia There are a couple extra things that you have to do Unfortunately, I don't have an Nvidia card so I can't show you those things But the documentation again is very very good and it's from what I've read really not all that difficult in order to set it up So it's just a couple extra steps So if you wanted to pass your GPU through if you have a Nvidia when you do those extra steps If not and you have an AMD or Intel It's automatic and what that means is that if you wanted to you could install say steam or One of the other game launchers inside of your Disturbox and run games from it using your dedicated hardware Now why you'd want to do that? I'm not actually sure Because probably your host machine would run it just fine. Anyways, but let's just say for whatever reason You are completely against using flat packs So you are on Debian and you don't want to use flat packs So you're going to be using an older version of steam if you're using it from getting it from a repository somewhere And you want the most recent version of steam, but you don't want to use a flat pack So you could use Disturbox theoretically to do that. That's a really weird example A better example is probably like Firefox. So let's just say you wanted to use regular old Firefox You didn't want to use DSR version of Firefox on Debian You could install Firefox in a Arch Linux container or Arch Linux Disturbox You should say and just run Firefox the brand new spanking version from that container There are many different scenarios that you can think of of situations where you want the most recent version of something But your distribution doesn't have it or let's just say your distribution doesn't package It right if there's something from the AUR that you want But you're running Debian you can install an Arch Linux Disturbox and get that package from the AUR It's really really cool. So I'm like I'm like five minutes into this video I haven't even shown you anything about this. So let's go ahead and jump in I Have so much to show you this video is going to be phenomenally long But it's it's really super cool So I hope you guys stick around because it's like said it's it's awesome. So first off you have to install Disturbox. It's very very easy just pseudo apt install Disturbox pseudo Pac-Man dash s install Disturbox pseudo DNF install Disturbox you get the idea It's in all the repositories and it just downloads and you're ready to go That's really all there is to it now the first thing you want to do before you start messing around with things is Look at the documentation. So if we go to a browser here and go to their website You can see that it has really good documentation and it's very well laid out So the first thing that we're actually going to want to do is go to the compatibility list for the container distros These are the distributions that it supports. So there are 20 maybe 30 different distributions that they support although it's not really nearly as many as you think it is because a lot of these Here are duplications. So the reason why there are duplicates is because the ones they have toolbox next to their name are more Suited towards actually using them. They have more packages and stuff that it actually includes when you install the Disturbox The ones without toolbox are more minimal. So you'd be kind of more on your own to set those things up So if you're kind of looking to use one of these things out of the box Install one of the ones that have toolbox next to the name. So today, we're going to actually install Fedora so in order to do that, we're going to need this URL here. So I'm going to install Fedora 38 I'm going to take this URL here. I'm going to copy it. I'm going to go to a terminal I'm going to do distro box create and then dash I for image like so I'm going to copy that URL that we just copied and then I'm going to do dash and I'm going to give it a name So I'm just going to call this Fedora 1 and then I'm going to hit enter. Okay, so once that is done And it doesn't take very long. It's going to give me a command to run So I have that command right here I'm going to copy that and paste it into the terminal and enter now It's going to take a couple minutes here to actually install the Fedora onto the container It doesn't usually take any more any longer than two minutes or so most of the time It doesn't even take that and you'll see some output here once it actually gets going So I'm going to cut the video here and I'll come back. Okay, so once it's done You're actually going to be inside of the container already. You can see that by your host name changing So in this case, it's going to be the name that we gave it up above So I gave this the container name of Fedora one. So if I want to say use neo fetch I do sudo dnf install neo fetch I'm also going to install exa so that I can do ls is here and while it's doing that I'm going to explain something that's cool. So basically What did stro box does is it uses your home directory? And if I when I say your home directory what I mean is the host machines home directory So if you have configuration files in your dot config or if you have things in your home directory It's going to use all those things So one of the things that you'll want to see here is that it's actually going to use my Configuration file for neo fetch from my home directory So if I do neo fetch here just like so it's actually going to you're going to see the little Debian logo there.  So if I actually go to my regular machine You can see I'm on Debian here and it's using that particular configuration file for neo fetch So I've just installed fedora packages basically on Debian Okay, that's basically what I've just done now. It's more complicated than that obviously But if I do an ls here you can see that it's just using my home directory that I have on My host machine. So I have a directory here called test right now if I go to my other tab here and do an ls inside of my home directory and actual home directory You can see that test file exists in both places So if I were inside of the container if I would do rm-rf test and then I go back to The home directory here and do that ls again you can see that the test directory has been Deleted so it's using your home directory the rest of the files on the system are contained Inside of the container so your your etsy directory your user directory all that stuff is inside Of the container and all the applications that you install are inside of the container So the neo fetch that I installed on Debian doesn't work on fedora. I have to install it in both places Now that's not technically true and that's kind of the point of the video But we're not there yet. So just hold on the thing that is awesome about Distrobox besides the fact that you can install packages is that you can actually use those packages So you can imagine a scenario like I said earlier where there's a package on in the AUR that you want that you can't get on Debian so You know whether that you know, that's a font or a library or a window manager or something like that If you want to get those but it's not on Debian What would you do normally you'd have to build it from source or you'd have to distro hop Those are the usually your options right well now that you have distrobox You can actually install those things from the AUR. So what I'm going to do here Actually Is I'm going to exit out of this fedora Distrobox and I'm going to enter into one that I created earlier. So I'm going to do distrobox enter arch Linux toolbox Okay, and if I do a neo fetch dash dash kind of fake here So that uses the stock configuration file You can say this is arch Linux and this is just a arch Linux toolbox that I've been using for a little while And I've installed things on this. So here's the coolest thing Or one of the coolest things about distrobox I have in this container firefox But in my on my debbie machine if I were to search for firefox and actually see don't spell it correctly You'd see I have no firefox I have no foxes, but I have it in the container. So If I go to a terminal on my host machine and run this Command here Now remember there's no firefox on my main system if I run this command here Basically what this does is that this is a path to a command It has a couple options It has the name of the container and then it has the name of the application that I want to start now Remember no firefox on the main machine, but if I enter here Bam firefox. Okay, this firefox is running Inside of that container, but I can use it just like regular normal firefox now Starting things from the terminal not always the most convenient thing. So you could take this line of Or this command here and put it in a desktop file and then put it in your One of your paths and you could actually get that to show up inside of rofi or d menu Or one of your application files And basically what it's just going to do is run that command and it would start firefox and it would You'd be using firefox inside of arch linux while using debbie in its inception Okay, and it's magic and i'm pretty sure the people who created this are wizards Okay, now I know guys. It's just firefox man.  But the thing is it's not just firefox you could do davinci resolve because davinci resolve is notoriously hard to install On some distributions installing it on debbie and it is almost impossible. Okay, it's not actually impossible But it's not easy But it's actually much easier on fedora or centOS or one of the world-based distributions, right? You can create a discerbox of one of those distributions install davinci resolve and it's much easier Right, and you can just use this command here But with davinci resolve and launch it from your run launcher and just use it as if it was a native application Installed on debbie. That's really cool. Now, obviously We wouldn't just be here if I could if I was just talking about firefox or davinci resolve Or some random package from the aor what if I told you this applied to desktop environments and window managers as well Well, why is that cool? Well, first of all if you were in this position I was in a week ago where I could not get qtowl to install on debbie Some of that was because of you know version numbers and stuff like that I ended up having to use nix in order to install qtowl But if I had been using distra box at the time I could have actually bypass nix and just use distra box So basically what I'm talking about here is that I can install say let's say awesome window manager I can install that from my arch linux distra box and actually use it on my debbie and machine Okay, now obviously Our awesome window managers also in the debbie and repository. So that's not that cool But you could use things like hyperland. So hyperland is not Instead of the debbie and repositories as far as I'm aware, but it is in the aor So you could download load the hyperland from the aor and Install it in your arch linux distra box and run it from debbie and basically Same thing with qtowl qtowl is not in the debbie and repositories So I could install that from the aor and run that from my arch linux Distra box or from my fedora or distra box or wherever right? I can do it from Anywhere where that package happens to exist just create that distra box and then run it now Obviously, there's a way to do that and I'm going to show you that but the idea here Isn't necessarily to show you Exact how to but to show you how cool it is because I like I said at the beginning I implore you to go check out The documentation because there's so much more to this and I'm not explaining And I'm probably not explaining what I am explaining very well, but I'm trying here So go check out the the the documentation is going to save you a lot of my blathering. So let's go ahead and Close this out here. So let's go ahead and install awesome window managers So I need in order to do that. I need to go back to my arch linux toolbox and do sudo pacman dash s I actually need to spell that right and then awesome Okay, I'm gonna enter here and it's going to do its thing Okay, and then what I'm going to need to do Is while I'm still inside of the container And I'm going to need to find the dot desktop file for awesome window managers So I'm going to do an ls here have user share x sessions now remember that this is on the container It's in my distro box by design any user files Like you in the user directory or inside of etsy or whatever those are not accessible to the host All right, these are not things that I could access from my debbing system But the home directory is so in order for me to boot into awesome From my debbing machine. I need to have that dot desktop file Inside of my user directory on my host machine So in order to do that, I'm going to do cp awesome desktop and then I'm going to do till the slash Okay, now once that's done And I've seen that I have that in my home directory. I can exit out of My container here just hit hit exit it'll exit out of the container now I'm technically back in my debbing machine And I'm going to go to my scripts folder and I'm going to create the following script So this script here does two things So it's going to tell it that it's a script So that's not really a thing that I counted and that's going to use this line here This line here basically tells Your host machine and distro box that the user that you're using is you If that makes any sense It's more complicated than that But basically it's just telling the host that's the local user trying to execute a command. Okay It's because otherwise it's not going to know what users has permission to do so It's like says more complicated than that, but you need that line inside of a script. Okay And then you need this line here now. We've used this line before okay We when we launched firefox we use this exact line So it's the path to distro box this enter the dash t and dash n flags And the name of the container. So in this case, it's arch Linux dash toolbox dash dash and then awesome Now this particular line right here comes from the container and the binary of the window manager that you're trying to launch So if you if you don't know what this is go back into your container do an ls of slash user bin And then grep for the name of the the window manager that you want to find So if you're doing hyperland do a grep for hyperland It's probably right in there Basically what you're just wanting to make sure is that it's in that particular path or it's in your path somewhere Usually it's just the name of the window manager Some of them have the dash session After that so you will we want to make sure that you're using the right name here for awesome It's awesome. Okay. That's really all it needs to be so you're gonna we're gonna want to save this And then you're going to want to chmod plus x awesome, which is the name of the script Okay So now that you have that you need to go back into your home directory And you're going to want to vim into that awesome desktop file and you're going to want to make it look like this Okay, so basically what we're doing here is we're executing that script that we just created Okay, that script that we just created inside of our scripts directory So there's actually one thing that I need to show you so Go ahead and finish this put the path to that script You'll want it inside of your path your capital path path Okay, and that's the reason why slash user local bin awesome That's the thing that I missed here. So if you want if you go back to where that script was So our script right here is awesome.  Okay, just like that It'll ask you for your password mine's already there. So I don't need to do that Basically what that does is it makes it executable system wide.  We manage it now. You know, it's good to remember the awesome way to manager Is available in the debing repository. So this isn't as cool as it could possibly be I could have done hyperland, but then I would have to set up all whaling and stuff like that I tried xfc. So before actually before I hop out of this, I do want to put throw some caution out there So with certain particular desktop environments and stuff like that They're expecting some debuts paths to be there and xdg durrs to be set in proper order And if those directories and stuff aren't in their proper places Your desktop environment may not launch and you may need to do some finagling to get them to run Okay, so I tried xfc for I didn't have a chance to troubleshoot. It would not launch So just know that it's not always going to be just as simple as doing the things that I just showed you You may find some Extra things that you have to do depending on the desktop environment or window manager that you're choosing So that's the reason why I'm choosing awesome because I know that this will work So it just works out of the box. So anyways, I'm going to pause here. I'm going to come back and show you awesome Okay, here we are inside of awesome window manager now First of all, the audio may have quality may have dropped down a little bit I'm going to try to add it to make sure I could not get audacity to actually use my microphone I don't know what's going on there because obs is working fine. Paul's mixer said it was fine I don't know what's going on there. It doesn't really matter. Usually I record in audacity But right now we're recording in obs. It doesn't matter. So As you can see, I'm inside of arch Linux using awesome window manager Which we installed inside of a container On debion. So this is actually debion But it's a container running on top of it. You're running arch Linux and that's awesome. Okay It's the coolest thing I've ever seen now I I know that that I keep going on about this But I can't kind of go over the fact that I installed awesome inside of container now Like I said, awesome isn't the best example that I could have used. I could have used cutile I could have used something like hyperland I could have used xfce if I could have gotten it to run that was the original idea Something that I just did not have on my main system that I could have installed and Awesome, it was there But the idea here is that you can install Whatever you want and actually run it and that gives you An enormous amount of possibilities To choose from when it comes to packages package package managers Basically anything you can think of if if you want to broaden your horizons to a different distribution But you don't want to hop off the distro that you're on you can go install Gentoo inside of your Distro box and it would work you could use a merge You could use all of the use flags that you want to use you could do all of that stuff Inside of gentoo on top of debion, you know, you don't have to install a virtual machine And it will have gpu pass through will have your networking pass through It'll do all the things that it needs to do to install it And all you have to do is install your package that is on top of it And it's it's awesome. You can do gentoo. You can do open suza. You can do red hat You name the distro basically it's there for the most part obviously the the smaller distros not going to be there They don't focus on arch based distros So you're not going to go find zero linux or endeavor os or something that you're just going to get the main big ones Right, but you get the idea and for me This all opens up a whole bunch of testing opportunities for myself You know, it gives me the opportunity to use the aur Which I miss from when I used arched linux, but I don't have to switch away from the stability that is debion That is so cool so Yeah, that is Distro box now Like I said at the beginning. I only scratch the surface. I don't even think I scratched the surface I just touched the surface. You know, I didn't make a dent in this thing There are so many more things that you can do if you're a developer This gives you a whole bunch of options for having different versions of libraries and stuff that you can Incorporate into your code and you can do all of your compiling inside of a different You know distro You can do a whole bunch of testing on different distros All of this stuff and it makes it so much easier than setting up a whole bunch of virtual machines And then having to deal with you know, gpu pass through usp pass through You know different weird resolutions and stuff like that you have to deal with and you're dealing with a virtual machine And you don't have to download all the isos right like technically Yes, you're downloading the stuff from the iso, but it's all minimal and you install the stuff that you want extra on top of it Right, you don't have to worry about you know a four gigabyte iso or anything like that And you don't have to have all those packages just lying around the options here Or you to do things with your developer or just a regular user are so cool And I'm so looking for this is going to be this is going to work its way Into my daily workflow and it may just take over from so I've been using virtual machines as my Flow over the course of the last couple months maybe three months or so And I've been really liking that it's possible that I could use distro box instead now I haven't really thought that process through yet How I can maintain the privacy and stuff that I was looking for in a virtual machine And I need to learn more about this obviously, but the possibilities are there and I think the possibilities are endless And I'm so excited that I was able to share it with you guys. So That is distro box if you have thoughts on this you can leave those in the comment section below I know I didn't do as well a job of Explaining this as I possibly could have it was kind of all over the place So don't take any of the stuff really as a how to again check out the documentation There's also a blog post that I will leave in the video description showing you how to install window managers and stuff like that That's where I got all of the scripts and stuff that I showed you earlier So you can follow that along there. It explains it much better than I did So definitely check that stuff out before you actually do this because again, it's it's easier to do from someone else's How to than mine is just my line wasn't quite As coherent as I wanted to but I record this video three times before I actually jump out of this I want to give a big shout out to george castro He answered my questions and he did he always answers my questions so very patiently So thank you george for your support and your your just being pure awesome. So Follow him over on uh, mastodon He's awesome. So that's it for this video if you have thoughts on this again Comments in the comment section below if you haven't already leave a thumbs up on this video It really does help the channel You can follow me on mastodon or odyssey those links will be in the video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash the linux cast links for paypal and YouTube will be in the video description if you'd rather support me there Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon youtube you guys are all Absolutely amazing without you the channel just would not be anywhere near where it is right now So thank you so very very much for your support. I truly do appreciate it. You guys are awesome So thank you so very much for your support. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time


Hi, my name is Dr. Marcy Stone and I just wanted to say welcome. We're going to be reviewing the practice case study number two for your course leading organizational change and just a little bit of an overview for the case study. So this case study reviewed Gen Mart retail stores. So they're a big box store with over a thousand stores in the United States and the first store opened in 1962. The size of the Gen Mart stores varies depending on the population and location. Some Gen Mart stores include only general merchandise, some have general merchandise and a grocery store and some are small neighborhood markets. Kathy is the chief executive officer of Gen Mart and she has worked for Gen Mart for about 10 years and she was promoted a few years ago into her current position. She spent the last few years gaining a deep understanding of her job and the company and has created goals that she would like to see Gen Mart complete in the future. Lately, Kathy has noticed areas in which Gen Mart has fallen behind their competition and she's aware that changes need to be made if Gen Mart is going to survive into the future. For the last year, Gen Mart has remained stagnant in sales. Although they have not had any growth over the last year, they have not declined in sales. Alright, so let's talk about the organizational changes that she believes Gen Mart needs. So Kathy spent the last six months researching the issues, speaking to experts in the field and watching Gen Mart's competition see what improvements that they've made to their stores and websites. She understands that changes will be expensive but also that the changes are necessary for any future growth. Kathy hired an outside change management expert to assist with the changes. And Kathy and the change management expert Paula have decided that the following changes are needed. So first is the current search engine optimization or SEO for the Gen Mart website. So she noticed that they weren't coming up higher in searches and she that that was going to be a problem. And then the second thing is she realized that they need to have a better digital and social media marketing plan for the Gen Mart website. And then third, she needed an updated supply chain system that is current with the way that supply chain is today as opposed to 10 years ago. And then Gen Mart's physical stores needed an updated floor plan for better traffic flow. As Kathy and her team began to implement changes to the website and the physical stores, communication with their 200,000 plus employees seemed to be their biggest struggle. Relaying information from the vice presidents down to the cashier level had become challenging. There was confusion at all levels and Kathy was working to better communicate at all levels. Kathy supervises an executive vice president, Kevin, who supervises four senior vice presidents, each of whom covers one of four territories in the United States. The vice presidents each have offices at their corporate office and each will assist Kathy in making the company wide changes. Kathy's leadership style is transformational and Kevin, the executive VP, he's new in his position and he has an autocratic leadership style. Kevin has been studying retail and grocery store failures to better understand the organizational changes and why they are needed. He believes that the company is on the right track with these changes and updates to the stores, the supply chain and the website. He now understands why several large retail stores have failed over the last decade and it was because of the failure to change with advancing technology and customer needs. Because Kathy and Kevin's leadership styles are so different, occasionally they disagree about store operations and how slow the organizational changes are taking place. Because Kevin is new to Genmar, Kathy has been patient while Kevin obtains a better understanding of the company and the needed changes. There's also an organizational change committee so Kathy decided that she could not coordinate the entire process of the organizational changes. She asked Kevin to organize a committee that he would oversee to ensure that the changes were being properly conducted. This committee will also utilize the outside experts from the change management company who are assisting with the process. This case study examines a few different leadership styles and there are several exam questions that refer to leadership styles. While there are numerous types of leadership styles and each one will lead differently, understanding the leadership styles and your own style will help you to be a better leader. So here are the two leadership styles that are covered in this case study. A good leader will recognize this and assist employees with the change process. Kathy is a transformational leader so these types of leaders are exceptionally good at change perhaps because they're comfortable with the change process and their positive attitude may be transmitted to all employees. They work to ensure that employees are comfortable with the change process and they seem to see the good in all employees which creates a better working relationship. Transformational leaders are very authentic, they're humble, they're able to listen to employees with their to their ideas with an open mind and respond without judging and they may be able to utilize these ideas in some way during the change process. They're also very good collaborators and this allows them to use ideas that may be from employees. The team as a whole other teams through or through research. In many ways they know how to bring people together to try to solve a problem or perhaps an issue that's preventing change from occurring. In this case study Kevin is an autocratic leadership style. Autocratic leaders can be very stern and this type of leader may not be as open to listening to employee ideas but they can be great in a crisis when decisions need to be made very quickly because they feel really comfortable making decisions on their own without others input. All right so now we're going to cover five questions from the case study. These are actual questions from your case study and we're going to talk about them how they apply to the course learning outcomes and what the answers are. So the first one is why is it important for Gen warrant to have a change management plan? Possible answers are the plan will help employees understand why change is needed. The plan will help leaders better understand their team and resistance to change. The plan assists leaders in understanding what they need to do to get the employees involved and the answer is C. So the plan assists leaders in understanding what they need to do to get the employees involved. So one of the things that we've talked about over and over again in this course is the fact that employees need to be aware not only of what the changes are but why the changes are necessary and in order if you do not get their buy-in then change just doesn't occur and so we've talked about that kind of over and over again and in this question it's really asking about that plan. So why do you need to have that plan to change and in this case it would be kind of it does assist them in what they need to do what needs to be done and then also how to get those employees involved. The course learning outcome for this one is determine the scale and scope of organizational change change initiatives. Okay and now we have question two. So when Gen Mark managers attempt to make organizational changes why is it important to focus on employees and encourage them? So potential answers are A. Employees decide if they want to change. B. If employees do not make the changes the attempt will fail and C. Employees enjoy change and training allows them to change and obviously the answer is B. So if they do not make the changes the attempt will fail. So this was a little bit like the last question. One of the things that comes up over and over in the course that you really of everything you get out of this course this is the one thing you really need to understand. Employees need to be thoroughly trained on the change process but then also you need to make sure that they understand why it's necessary. Employees for the most part do not enjoy change in the workplace they do not enjoy it and most of the time that comes from some experience. So a company has tried to make changes in the past they've made those changes and it didn't work very well it wasn't well organized and in our personal lives we enjoy change but at work it seems to be something that most employees will fear and they will immediately resist and as we've talked about if they're not if you don't have their buy-in they are the ones making the changes but if you don't have their buy-in it won't happen and so it's really important that you give them that extra attention especially at the beginning to explain here's what the changes are here's what we're going to need you to do and here's why we need to have these changes and a lot of times it occurs because you need to keep up with what's going on in the industry or what's going on in technology kind of forcing your company to change otherwise you won't survive and so that needs to be expressed to the employees to get their buy-in and then the course learning outcome for this one is interpret the reasons organizations fail at implementing change and mitigation strategies. Okay so question number three is why would it be important for Kathy to study other retail chain failures and how can it help her plan needed changes so the three potential answers are she may gain a better understanding of mistakes in general she could better understand the change process and resistance to change or see she may learn from other business retail business cases to help create a plan for success and in this case it is B so she could better understand the change process and resistance to change by studying and in the case study one of the things that we talked about was the fact that Kevin was doing quite a bit of research and looking at why companies fail now Kathy knew that because she had been putting together the plan had been looking at it for more than a year or more than six months to try to develop the change plan so and when we think about these failed other failed retail chains we think about things that we've talked about in the course already but blockbuster was a big retail chain failure they just refused to chain and and it was mostly technology I mean came along and they were much more technologically ready to stream and mail DVDs to people at the time and actually read recently that they're stopping that part of their business which I didn't even realize had continued but they were stopping it just because of a lack of needs and most people are streaming Netflix and then Borders Books is another example Sears is another example companies Sears an amazing one because they had been around for more than a hundred years they survived quite a few decades of changes extreme changes only to not be able to keep up with the technological changes of moving from a catalog to you know retail store and then to an online environment and then let's see so the course learning outcome for this one is analyze critical people skills to effectively lead others through change in a given organization all right question number four Jenmart has a few stores in Canada and Mexico each near the US border the culture of these stores is different from the stores in the US and for the most part another language is spoken in addition the stores also have a very different business strategy than most of the stores in the US are these issues important to consider during the organizational changes why or why not and then our possible three answers a is yes since the culture of the stores will be different it's important to take that into consideration B is yes operations in another country are always different because of the laws background and culture of the people and then C the answer is no essentially they are all close to the border so their culture and communication are essentially the same so and the obvious answer here is B so operations are always different because of the laws background and culture of the people and it's always important to take that into consideration especially during organizational change so if someone is sent to those stores to try to enact those changes and they really don't take into account that cultural change then change is not going to occur in those stores so it's really important that they understand exactly the laws of that country the background of that country the culture of the people the values those are all the things that they must take into consideration not only during organizational change but when opening a new store in those areas as well let's see course learning outcomes so differentiate long-range strategies to lead the organization to successful outcomes all right here is question five so Kathy has tried to ensure that the organizational changes are understood by employees and are made as efficiently as possible she has utilized several resources attempted to communicate better with all employees and ensured follow-up with all direct reports is this what she should be doing why or why not so possible answers are yes this is an example of facilitating positive change B this is an example of facilitating negative change or C no this is an example of neither positive nor negative change the obvious answer there is A it is an example of facilitating positive change these example there very much like her leadership style her transformational leadership style she wants to be as open as possible she doesn't want to hide anything from the employees she also wants to make sure that she's looking at her resources communicating better with all employees and then to do that follow-up which is needed with all of her direct reports so as she does these things and she's more open about what's going on in the organization employees are more likely to be open to that change and transformational leaders are great for that they really are very open to change they want to facilitate that change they're very positive about it very easy to follow in this she's in the perfect position to be able to enact that change now the one thing to consider in that too is Kevin who works directly for her has the exact opposite leadership styles so there's a little bit of a balance there in a sense between the two of them but with her and the lead she's able to kind of maintain that positive effect that she's trying to kind of facilitate that on the employee with the employee all right in conclusion so this was the case study two for your course we talked a little bit about leadership styles and the leadership styles in the course so transformational and also autocratic and then we went through five of your exam questions to kind of review those give you a little bit of an idea of why and what you're going to be looking at on the exam and then this is the conclusion so I just wanted to say thank you so I my name is Dr. Marcy Stone and this has been your case study two video review thank you