So today we're going to make a synth pad using the Perform VE. I just wanted to be super simple ambient synth pads are a staple of Synthesizer sounds in general. So the goal here is just to make something Super simple a bread and butter synth sound So the first thing that I'm gonna do is get a sample and I think the most important thing with a sample in a pad Is that it has a long sustain? The VE will only play back a sample as long as you record it when it's in one-shot mode Otherwise, it'll loop, but if you loop then it gets kind of percussive and I want this to be just a long Sustained sample when I hold the chord. So I'm gonna do I think an ah, but really long and what's nice about VE is that it flattens my pitch So my aw can be pitchy my aw can not necessarily sound great as I record it, but anyway So really I'd like max the sample link there, but what's great about that is I can hold the chord for a really long time So the first thing we're gonna do is adjust the release of this because right now if I release a note It kind of stops right away And I'd rather that it kind of smoothly decays after I release the note So the way we do this is we go to the morph button when you press the mode corner on the top right and As you just adjust the dial if it's green then you're adjusting release. So So that's a good release to my ear and I think I'm just gonna keep the style neutral so it's just playing back the notes kind of naturally For now at least There's no gender shifting Next up if we want an ambient pad we have to add ambience So I'm gonna add some reverb here and I'm just gonna add reverb. I'm not gonna add any delay right now So let's just hear that I'm gonna use the hall reverb type and I'm gonna add a lot of it So already we've got a very almost mellotron like Choir sound and it's nice and ambient But I'd like to make it sound more like a synthesizer The way I'm gonna do that is by using the vocoder style in the morph button so if we just press the style here and Increase this until the light is not blue So now we're in the vocoder waveforms here, and I'm just gonna use a pretty basic saw wave And let's see how that sounds just with the reverb And just to make it sound a little bit less like a human voice I'm going to change the gender to I'm gonna shift the gender down See how that sounds That sounds nice, but it's a little bit harsh So I'm also going to add the low-pass filter that we have here in the filter It's just the first style and I'm gonna filter it down a little bit. Let's listen to that So I think that's really awesome It doesn't necessarily sound like an analog synth, but if you want us to analog synth by an analog synth, right? This is something that's very unique and What's great about this especially when you're using the filter is that it's versatile You can go from a very soft sound which could just sit in the background in a mix up to a really bright Kind of wide ambient sound Let's try some different vocoder waveforms while we're here. Just see what they sound like So this type of sound could be really useful if you're playing with a band And you just need to fill out the mix a little bit if you're their keyboard player This could be useful if you're in a church setting and you need to add a little bit of ambience In a studio setting if you're like working on a track and you want an interesting pad It doesn't necessarily sound like your basic analog synth pad This is a great machine for creating simple pads and background ambiences as well as all the other crazy stuff that it can do Thanks for watching


Welcome to the Equal Opportunities Committee. It is the third meeting of 2015. Please set any electronic devices to flight mode or off please. I would like to start with introductions. We are supported at the table by the clerking and research staff, official reporters and broadcasting services, and around the room by the security office and welcome to observers in the public gallery. My name is Margaret McCulloch and I am the committee's convener. Members will now introduce themselves in turn, starting here on my right. Oh, sorry. Apologies, convener. Good morning, cabinet secretary. Sandra White, MSP, for Glasgow, Kelvin. Good morning. Crucian, I'll add MSP for North East of Scotland. Good morning. I'm Jane Baxter, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife. John Mason, MSP for Glasgow, Shetleston. Good morning. John Finnie, MSP Hines and Hines. The first agenda item today is a decision on taking business in private. You're asked to agree consideration of evidence heard during today's meeting at item 3 and discussion on your approach to an inquiry on race at item 4 in private. We all agreed. Item agenda 2 is an evidence session with the cabinet secretary for social justice, communities and pensioners rights of our inquiry into the lives of gypsy travellers. I welcome the cabinet secretary and his accompanying officials. I can start by asking you and your officials to introduce yourselves and invite you, cabinet secretary, to make any opening remarks. Thank you very much, convener. I'll begin by introducing myself and the officials. Obviously, my name is Alec Neal, MSP, cabinet secretary for social justice, communities and pensioners rights. On my left is David Thompson, who is head of primary care in the health division in the Scottish Government. On my immediate right is Leslie Irving, who is part of the equality unit in the Scottish Government. On my far right, I am sure that that is not the case politically, is William Fleming from the housing division of the Scottish Government. It is deliberate, although we do not have every division or department involved in this issue. I thought that it was useful just to show how we are taking a pan-government approach to this whole issue of gypsy travellers that we had somebody from health, somebody from equality, somebody from housing. I could have had somebody from planning, from local government, from education and from a range of other departments as well, but I wanted to give the committee a flavour of how this strategy is being developed right across the whole Government. I am delighted to be here again after my visit recently to the Equal Opportunities Committee and to speak in support of the efforts of the Scottish Government in relation to provisions for the gypsy traveller communities. As you are obviously aware after the recent cabinet reshuffle, I now have responsibility for this, although when I was minister for housing and communities, I had responsibility five or six years ago for this area of policy as well. I am fully committed to meeting the needs of Scotland's gypsy travellers who remain one of the most disenfranchised and discriminated against communities in Scotland. Can I first recognise the great work done by the committee itself up to this point? The two recent inquiries undertaken by gypsy travellers in care and where gypsy travellers live have underpinned our activity and shaped our agenda over the last two years. As recommended by the committee, the Scottish Government is working to develop an overarching strategy and action plan for gypsy travellers, which we expect to publish this summer. The strategy is being developed in consultation with a range of key stakeholders via the Gypsy Traveller Strategy Development Group. The group includes members of the Gypsy Traveller community themselves, which I know is something the committee places a great deal of importance on quite rightly in my view. In relation to accommodation, ministers and officials have visited sites, have met with key groups and convened a national site working group to gather views and consider the issues further. Our role is to set a robust framework and promote good practice so that those needs can be properly assessed and met at a local level. We have already delivered new guidance on local housing strategies and housing needs demand assessments. Those stress the need to assess and fully take into account the accommodation requirements of gypsy travellers. We have taken on board the lessons and information gathered through our visits and meetings to now set out a clear plan of action for the months ahead. That includes publishing minimum standards for local authority gypsy traveller sites, which every site must adhere to. In relation to tenancies, we will also publish national guidance on the rights and responsibilities that are expected for every gypsy traveller site tenant. In addition, guidance on unauthorised sites will also be published. As I have stated previously, I am committed to consulting gypsy travellers on guidance and decisions that affect their lives. Their views will be integral to the development of the guidance on sites that I have just referred to. In the longer term, we are looking at promoting good practice on planning to identify the best way to help the gypsy traveller community to make best use of its assets. As the committee will appreciate, the community is a diverse one with a range of needs. Improving attendance and attainment in gypsy traveller children is a key priority going forward. To support that, the Scottish Government has reconvened the Scottish Traveller Education Review Group to improve access to education. The group will develop and then promote guidance on the education of young people from travelling families and support the development of local inclusive approaches across Scotland, which address some of the challenges that are faced. Draft guidance is expected to be ready for consultation by the end of 2015, with publication thereafter in early 2016. We remain committed to finding innovative ways of tackling barriers to improving the health of gypsy traveller communities. For example, over 60 gypsy traveller families have now benefited via the Better Break programme and Take a Break programme, which provides short breaks to disabled children and young people with complex needs and their families. Both funds continue to be widely advertised in order to encourage future funding applications from the gypsy traveller community, including promotion via the traveller's times in the hope of supporting many more gypsy traveller families in the future. Of course, that is just a snippet of the activity going on, and I look forward to taking questions from the committee in due course. To give you an indication of the five areas that action will be taken over the coming months, first of all, our equity outcome, the progress and our own equality outcome for gypsy travellers, which is to reduce discrimination against gypsy travellers, we will be publishing the progress in that in April. We will also be publishing our planning guides on sites for local authorities in April. In May, we will be publishing our guidance on the quality of sites and, as I said in my speech, the rights and responsibilities of both tenants and occupants. In the summer, we will be publishing the overarching strategy that I referred to, as well as a briefing for local elected members on that issue. Finally, as we have indicated previously, we will be running sometime, probably in the autumn, a marketing campaign to improve awareness and understanding of the needs of the gypsy traveller community and to try to reduce the level of discrimination against those communities throughout Scotland. I finish by saying that we recognise that resolving the issues that are faced by gypsy travellers is a challenge, and our approach has been very much to look at qualitative issues, not just quantitative issues, and to take all the key stakeholders with us, because the gypsy traveller community is not a homogenous community, as people around this table know, and we need to make sure that we take all sections of the gypsy traveller community as well as other stakeholders with us. Solutions do require a collaborative working approach between the range of partner agencies, including national and local government, NHS boards, education authorities, third sector organisations and the community itself. We are determined to do all that we can working with the committee to reduce discrimination with the objective of eliminating discrimination against the gypsy traveller community in Scotland and ensuring that, in terms of health, education, housing and all the other amenities and public services that we normally expect of ourselves, that they have equal access to those services on an on-going basis. Thank you very much Cabinet Secretary for that update. We appreciate how you are working to a tight timescale this morning, so I will pass you straight over to John Finnie to ask the first set of questions. Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, and thanks for that update. Cabinet Secretary, if I was a young gypsy traveller staying in a site for the first time I had a street sweeper in the day before the minister arrived. If the utility blocks were painted for the first time in many years, urgently, over cables, beautifully white painted over cables over windows, if the school, the unit in that site, was presently unoccupied and representations to have a safer route to school put in were told, there is no point, there is no interest. Why would I believe any of this? We are 15 years on, we have had repeated and I do not doubt your good faith and engagement in this, but why would I believe any of this? This is just more words from remote officials. Well, obviously I would disagree with that, John, because— It is a little bit difficult, but that is genuinely the perception that you must engage with these people in a one-to-one, and you have heard all this before. Yes. Well, we are engaging with them, but to be honest it is not always the easiest of communities to engage in because of their long-standing, over decades suspicion, in very justified in many cases, of officialdom at all levels. Of course, we rely also on the goodwill and the intentions of local authorities and others at local level, because we can only set the national framework and the policy framework, whether it is in health and education and housing and planning across a whole range of things on the equalities aspects, but we rely on others not just to stick to the letter of what we are trying to do, but actually to do it in the spirit of what we are trying to do. I am going to be planning a series of discussions myself between now and the end of the year with the gypsy traveller community, because my approach to this job, whether it is gypsy travellers or tenants in local authority houses or any other issues, is not to believe what I am told entirely through official channels, but to find out for myself what is happening on the ground. That is the best way of finding out is all of the stuff that we are doing with the best of intent, actually having the impact that we hope and are intending it to have on the ground, because it is not. We need to look at why not and sort it. For the voice of any doubt, I was not questioning your role in seeking to address this issue, but it is an understandable perception. It has been very helpful that you have used to term discrimination and disenfranchised on a number of occasions, because that is how those people feel. Can you explain, cabinet secretary, when you say that your engagement is directly with the gypsy traveller community, who do you mean by that? You are right to say that it is just like any other community, a very diverse community. I remember when I was Minister of Housing and Communities, there was a particular issue raised by Brian Adam MSP around the Aberdeen area, and there were real problems in Aberdeen of a much more critical nature than anything that is currently that we are dealing with. I took responsibility for that. We formed a working group, and we involved the gypsy traveller community in that. We actually went and spoke. That involved the police, it involved housing, it involved the various local authorities, it involved ourselves, and we involved Brian and a number of other MSPs to make sure that it had cross-party support as well, and we actually worked with the members of the community. Now, there are not a lot of formal representation groups in the gypsy traveller community, so my view is that you have to go and actually talk to the people on the ground and find out what their views are. As you say, John, sometimes they are reluctant to do that for obvious reasons and for largely historic reasons, but also because they are still subject to discrimination very often and therefore they are not sure who they can trust and who they can't trust. However, during that exercise, we went out of our way, and I think that we ended up eventually with a situation that was acceptable to everybody. The gypsy traveller community got the need for sites addressed. At the same time, the wider community was satisfied that we had a better solution than had been the kind of makeshift solution that happened previously, which caused enormous irritation both for the gypsy traveller community and for others. I think that you have to go and talk to people. A similar group is the showman's people. I have a meeting with the showman's people coming up at the instigation, initially, of Dick Lightley MSP. I think that it is the next couple of weeks. I am deliberately wanting to talk to people who are from those communities rather than, if you like, the suits, who are the middle people between me and the community. Can I also ask about research? Is the Scottish Government pulling together research? You mentioned MECOP. In my own area, Northargyll Carers Centre, I do tremendous work in conjunction with MECOP with the gypsy traveller community. We have heard that the British Irish Parliamentary Association of Economic and Social Equity was calling on British and Irish jurisdictions to consider a strategy obligation in all authorities to co-ordinate provision. I think that there is movement between the different component parts of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Can you comment on pulling some of these together, please? First of all, in terms of research, I think that we have had quite a lot of research going on. If you look at the work that is being done by way of preparation for the overarching strategy that will be published in the summer, which involves people from the gypsy traveller community in that work, then, obviously, before you get to developing a strategy, you need to do the basic research. What I am going to do is demonstrate the pan-government work that is being done. Briefly, I am going to ask each of the officials to give some examples of the research and the co-ordination work going on in their respective departments. I will start with David at this end and will work to Leslie and William at the other end. That is fine. Talking specifically about research, we have done the research into handheld records with NHS Health Scotland, which has shown some of the advantages of that, but some of the difficulties in delivering handheld records both within the health service and within the gypsy traveller community. We are also working on, as part of our work on the new GP contract, which we will have, hopefully, in place by April 2017. We are looking at various different new models of care and how they address the needs of particular communities, particularly in the context of the new integration authorities and how they meet the needs of their local community. We are working with GP practices on a number of different models, looking at different issues within communities. We have worked with the Conan Doyle practice on some of the issues within their community in Edinburgh and we are also in the early stages of working with a more rural community general practice, which has a constituency of gypsy travellers and we hope to have a project in there soon. There are various different things that we are using to inform the work that we are using going forward. As David has explained in relation to health, the equality portfolio is also engaged in a range of initiatives that will add to the information and knowledge that we have about the communities. Obviously, we had a question in the 2011 census about identity as a gypsy traveller for the first time, so our statistical colleagues are continuing to process the information from that. There has recently been a release of information about gypsy travellers in relation to employment and health and a number of other factors. That is on-going work that will continue to build the evidence base. It is something that we committed to do some years ago. Not Scottish Government directly, but the Quality and Human Rights Commission has recently produced some research into site provision, identifying good practice in three sites in Scotland and Carlyle in England, and has made some useful recommendations there. We will know more about that. On the work that we do in the development of the strategy and in our funding programme on the equality side, we fund a number of organisations. MECOP has been mentioned this morning already. We also fund article 12, which works with young gypsy travellers in particular. As Mr Finlay mentioned, we ask the young gypsy traveller to believe anything that we say, and I absolutely take that point. One of the ways that we are trying to address that is to build a cohort of young gypsy travellers who have the capacity to engage and to be involved in consultation and to speak for their community and to be the leaders of the future. That is certainly what we aspire to from that funding. We are also funding the Friends of Romano Lav, which is a representative group for Roma people in Scotland, who very much want to be engaged with the Government and on behalf of their community, but again realise that they have some way to go before they have the capacity to do that. We have brought them on to the strategy development group in order that they can have that experience and learn from that too. A whole range of things that we are doing both on the hard research side with the statistical evidence gathering and analysis, but also in our funding of organisations to enable them to work directly with the community and add to the evidence base. On the gypsy traveller site working group, the group met four times last year and quite a large part of the meetings were taken up by receiving reports from various stakeholders and also asking some questions. We sent out questionnaires to local authorities trying to get updated data on numbers of sites and conditioners sites. We also as officials have made a priority to go out and meet gypsy travellers in their sites, not just local authority sites but also private sites. I am looking at my notes here, but I think that we have paid a couple of visits to unauthorised sites as well. We are trying to get an understanding first hand of the conditioners sites and also of the individual's experience of those sites. We are learning from that just how varied that experience is. We are learning quite a bit about how good sites can be developed, often privately, in places such as Lanarkshire. We are learning too about the experience in Falkirk, where over quite a lengthy period of time the community was brought round to understanding how a site could be integrated and made acceptable, and we have been looking at that in terms of some academic research that was carried out by Salford University and trying to draw out the lessons that might be applied in other areas. We are using the working group to acquire a better understanding, both in the abstract but also, as far as we can, first hand from our own experience, a bit like the Minister trying to get out there and understand from what we see to understand the nature of the problems. John Mason, you wrote to the convener that we have got the copy of the letter in January, and you talked about a forthcoming briefing for elected members, local councillors, I think. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about that. Do you think that the problem is that the local councillors do not understand what the responsibilities are, or is it just that, in some cases, they are so much under pressure by vocal groups in the settled community that they find it very difficult to, for example, produce sites and things? I think that it varies from place to place, John. Certainly, five or six years ago, when I was Minister for Housing and Communities, there was no doubt in my mind at all that councillors, both in Aberdeen City and in Aberdeen Shire, were under enormous pressure about the unofficial sites in and around both Aberdeen Shire and Aberdeen City. The seafront in Aberdeen, if I remember correctly, was one of the more controversial unofficial sites that were being used by gypsy travellers, and it had caused enormous problems with the local community, and was one of the reasons why Ryan Adam approached me to see what action we could take. Sometimes, as I will be quite honest, the attitude of local councillors itself is not always as enlightened perhaps as it could and should be. I think that we have some educational work to do in some areas as well about, you know, these are human beings who have the same human rights as the rest of us. Indeed, one of the areas of work that I am taking forward, both in relation to gypsy travellers but more widely, is in relation to SNAP, the Scottish National Action Plan on Human Rights. I had a meeting the other day with the chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, Professor Alan Miller. I am setting up a cross-government group just to look at the progress that we are making in terms of SNAP, the Scottish National Action Plan on Human Rights, and, obviously, improving the delivery of human rights in all its different guises for the gypsy traveller community's part of the action plan. That will be another tool, as it were, that we will use to measure progress along with the commission in terms of how much we are actually achieving on the ground with all these initiatives that are going on. I take your point, and you made it in that letter as well, that decisions are best made often usually at a local level with local knowledge and local accountability and the reality is that we have not seen progress. We are dealing with a national issue here, aren't we? One of the things about the gypsy travellers is that they are not attached to just one area, they are often attached to a number of areas. I wonder if you feel that there is either call it a lead, or you are talking about guidance—I do not know how strong that guidance is, really—but some kind of pressure or lead from the centre on local authorities to really get something to happen? I would not say that we have not made progress. I do think that we have made progress. If you have heard what David just alone said in terms of access to GP facilities, I think that there has been some progress made in that as one example. I think that there is progress made in aspects of housing and various other things, but the progress is variable across the country. There is no doubt about that. Overall, the progress is not as fast or as great as I would have liked to have seen. We have got to look at the strategic work that is going on, which obviously involves members of the gypsy traveller community. What do we need to do in this strategy to make it happen much more than is the case and to make it much less variable and less of a postcode lottery than it actually is? Obviously, not every local authority has a gypsy traveller community. They tend to be confined to a number of local authorities, and therefore we are working particularly with those local authorities. I have already mentioned Aberdeen and Grampian area, Falkirk, which is another area where there is a bit of a concentration of gypsy travellers. We need to work particularly with those local authorities where there is a permanent gypsy traveller presence, because there are some local authorities where there is very little or no presence whatsoever. While accepting that there are signs of progress, when we were up in Aberdeenshire, for example, we very much got the impression that it was the isolated primary school where there was a good relationship. It was an isolated GP practice where there was a good relationship. It was far from common. In fact, gypsy travellers were often going to places because they knew that school, unlike the majority, had a good relationship. That GP practice had a good relationship. We had a quote from Mekop—not to read the whole thing, but part of it was them quoting a gypsy traveller saying, "'Surely by now the Government has enough evidence about what needs to be done. Can't they just get it done instead of endlessly talking? Only then will gypsy travellers like me start to take it seriously.'" My fear is that we have made a lot of effort to engage as a committee, but there does come a time when people start shutting off because they just feel that there is no progress. I have no doubt that there is an element of that and an element of frustration, but I think that there is also clearly members of the gypsy traveller community who do recognise that progress has been made. Those people involved, for example, in the strategic working group, are not wasting their time in there because they believe that it is going to make a difference, but I do accept that there is a lot of frustration that is not happening quicker and more universally, and that is a frustration that is shared by us. If we need to take a more deregist approach—if that is what the strategy says—then I am prepared to take a more deregist approach if that is what is required to make it happen. However, how we do that, I would suggest that it has to be informed by the strategy, because the whole point of the strategy is that it is involving the stakeholders, including and in particular the gypsy traveller community. Cabinet Secretary, when the committee published its report in 2013 about where gypsy travellers lived, there were real concerns about the quality of sites and the conditions of sites, so I would like to know what has been done to address those poor conditions. If councils are non-compliant, what will the Scottish Government do about that? Are they going to monitor the outcomes or will there be sanctions? As I said, what we are going to be doing in May is publishing the guidance on the quality of the sites and the rights and responsibilities of both the owners and the occupants of the sites. If I can draw a parallel with the social housing more generally, as you know, we have the Scottish quality housing standard, which is the way in which we monitor the progress of social landlords, both councils and housing associations in terms of the quality of housing that they provide. I am equating the guidance that we are going to publish in May, and I expect it to have exactly the same standing as the Scottish quality and housing standards, because very clearly the objective of every social landlord in Scotland is to meet those standards, and indeed every investment plan that we approve and we do not provide funding if it does not. Every investment plan in every local authority area for housing and in every housing association at its core has the need to bring all their housing stock up to the Scottish quality housing standard by a certain period, so I want to see as vigorous a system applied in terms of the quality of sites for gypsy travellers. What if they are not? If they are not, we then have to have a look at what we need to do to get it sorted. There is a possibility at the end of the day of sanctioning the local authority. There is a possibility that we say that there will be grant funding for various things if they don't actually raise the standard. The starting point that I always have in these things is that if they are failing, as some have failed, I mean genuinely speaking, for example, local authorities are much further behind in the Scottish quality housing standard than are the housing associations. My approach to that has always been initially to try to use dialogue to get the local authority sector to improve its performance, and very often that works, particularly in relation to specific local authorities. The thing that works the most effectively is to say, well, look, if you don't improve, then don't bother coming to us for grant funding for more council housing. Why would we throw good money after bad? Very often it's the cash that speaks the loudest when you're dealing with local authorities. When you move on to the next question, I'm just changing the subject slightly, cabinet secretary. I'm interested in the implementation of the Children and Young People's Scotland Act, in particular GERFIC, and in particular the named person, which is a little bit controversial, but I'm wondering how all that's going to apply in the context of the Gypsy Traveller community. My view is that the name person system, and of course there's been a lot of rubbish written about the name person, utter rubbish in the practice about it, but I think that the name person concept is particularly applicable in the Gypsy Traveller community, because by definition they are travelling people. One of the problems that we have, whether it's making sure that they get proper access to health services or proper access to education services or proper access to any housing services that they wish, is the fact that they are travelling. Very often the travelling is travelling from one local authority area to another, and that makes it particularly difficult. In terms of implementing the named person legislation, there are particular challenges around the Gypsy Traveller community, but there are challenges that I will even have to face and find solutions to, and we're working with our education colleagues in all of that. Thank you very much, and we'll move on to Sandra White now. Thank you very much, convener. As I said, good morning. I wanted to pick up on what David mentioned when he was replying to John Finnie in regard to the NHS and working with the Gypsy Traveller community, particularly in the way of carers. Obviously, you mentioned about the respite care for disabilities. Can you tell me how you're going to speak to the NHS boards to get them to actually come together with the Gypsy Travellers to ensure that they get the same rights as anyone else in regard to caring facilities? Of course, Gypsy Travellers should have the same rights as anyone else, and that's very clear in our approach. What we've found is that, as part of the work of the strategy development group, we've had presentations from a number of NHS boards as to their approach. We've had NHS Health Scotland, Grampian and Fife as part of the development work. Each of those has taken a different approach to health Scotland. Obviously, did the research and have some conclusions for the strategy. With Grampian, we heard about the Clinterty halting site and the work there. I think that the committee has been to visit the site. It's fair to say that you did there get a situation where Gypsy Travellers were travelling to that place in order to get medical services. The interesting example that we heard from Fife was one where they've undertaken a needs assessment of Gypsy Travellers in their community. That took place in 2013 and has had a very specific plan coming from that where, for example, there's been sharing of information amongst health and social care staff. They've worked with NHS24 in the Scottish Ambulance Service to support the community. They've put in place named leads for education, health visiting and other things. That's something that we could potentially learn from in the context of the strategy development group. It would also be helpful to say that another good example is with NHS24, with the new 111 number, where NHS24 has, over the past six months, taken specific steps to work with the Gypsy Traveller community to promote the use of the 111 number to Gypsy Travellers. There are all sorts of different initiatives. The key is learning from those in the strategy. Can I mention another one, Sandra, in relation to that? When I was health secretary, we took the decision that everybody in Scotland should have an electronic patient record by 2020, if not earlier. The electronic patient record, one of the benefits, will be that travelling people will have their own record. Even if they travel from the health board area to the health board area, the fact that it's an electronic patient record, so if they go into a GP practice or into an A&E department, for example, they will be able to access their medical history immediately, provided that they have the authorisation from the patient, which one would assume they would have in those circumstances. The electronic patient record will be another tool that will help us very much. I'm particularly concerned about youngsters in terms of inoculations and all the rest of it. The electronic patient record will capture all of that, so it will be very quickly able to establish exactly what their medical history is, and that will help in terms of treatment as well. The other thing that David mentioned in his previous remarks, which I think should not be underestimated, is the opportunity of the new negotiations on the GP contract, which must be completed by May 2000 or April 2017. As you know at the moment, the GP system operates on the basis of a panel of patients, and if you're not on the panel of patients, then it can be very difficult to get treated. Again, this is a very particularly difficult issue with travelling people, because by definition they're travelling from one area to another. Even if they're in the same local authority area or the same health board area, if they're travelling between different GP catchment areas, then it's very difficult. Very often they don't bother registering with a GP in the first place. One of the things that the Government wants to achieve out of the GP contract negotiations is a system that would make it much easier for travelling people to access primary care services without necessarily having to be registered with one particular GP practice. That's obviously for negotiation, but it's an opportunity for us to improve the service. I don't think that we should underestimate the importance of that opportunity. Thank you very much, and I think that you sort of pre-empted in my question regarding handheld records. It would certainly improve the electronic one, because obviously we have evidence that health boards are saying that it's a problem with the handheld records and the gypsy travellers saying that it's an excuse they're making. I'm assuming that that would make a great improvement in that respect. Absolutely. Handheld records are a problem for everybody, not just for gypsy travellers. As you know, I represent a constituency in Lanarkshire, and one of the common problems that I have in dealing with complaints against the NHS is that somebody perhaps being treated between two hospitals, say between Monklands and Heremias, when they attend Heremias, their notes are in Monklands and they've not been transferred for an appointment. Sometimes if they're dealing, for example, with the Beatson in Glasgow, but their notes are in, say, the Monklands, and the notes haven't been transferred to the Beatson because the Beatson's only for one appointment and they're still basically hosted by the Monklands. The handheld records are a problem for everybody. It's not unique to the gypsy traveller community, and it's one of the reasons why the introduction of the electronic patient record, I think, is so important and could be so beneficial to everybody, but particularly beneficial to the gypsy traveller community. Thank you very much, and we'll move swiftly over to Christian now. Thank you very much. A couple of questions. First of all, I was included last week, cabinet secretary, and Biomisa spoke directly to the gypsy traveller community. One of the things very important, the message was given, is that local authorities have failed. This committee has failed, just understand, as the country government has failed. We maybe progressed a lot on the understanding of these communities, but we're not progressing at all on the practibility. One of the things which was, you know, the message was very, very strong, because local authorities have failed, because the country government failed, because we failed at creating new sites. Is there not time to empower, and I'm quite happy to see that on your letter that explains the way of promoting good practice and ending planning application, for gypsy travellers' site, but would it not be better to empower communities to have their own site and finding a way, because we know the sensors, for example, sites which have been created without planning process. I think that we are asking for a backdated planning application, but it's so important. How can we help to do that? Do you think that that's really the direction that should we take on powering these communities to have their own sites? Well, we need to be subject to some kind of overall planning mechanism, obviously, because you can't just go and set up a site anywhere, they could go anywhere, willy and elly and build a house. You have to have some kind of management control over that local authority level, land use control, planning control and all the rest of it. But in the same way that I could decide what site I want to build a house on, and that I then apply for planning permission, I don't see why we shouldn't have a parallel, similar system for people in the gypsy traveller community who identify a site and would like to have a permanent site there. It has to be subject to approval by the local authority, because you can't have anarchy reining in any of this where people can just decide to build houses or establish sites or anything, just wherever they like, without any kind of planning or building control or whatever. Subject to that qualification, I think that they should be able to identify areas where they want sites and then apply for the appropriate planning permission or building warrant permission or whatever permissions are required to do it, absolutely. Do you mark some site as well for community buyouts? Again, I don't see why not. It provided its subject to the normal and the whole point is to the normal procedures that would happen where a community buyout today. We can't just have people doing it willy-nilly without going through proper procedures, because you have to look at the wider picture, but, in principle, why not? I love you to come and meet some others. We'll fix up a time, and the next time I'm in the Aberdeen area, we'll do that, Christian. Good. One of the questions that I would like to ask is about what direct work you can do to reduce discrimination against safety travellers for the committee. You talked about you were going to have a campaign in the autumn, but you're thinking about having some of the work during the summer. Are you thinking maybe of having a big event or something, really, because a campaign could be sometimes seen as another campaign? How can we really make a big difference? I mentioned the marketing campaign because it's the first time it's ever been done, but, before we decide the shape of the campaign, you asked earlier about research. We're actually doing a lot of market research on what would be the most effective kind of campaign to run, what should be the tone of the campaign, who should the campaign be aimed at, should we use social media rather than, say, TV advertising or press media? So, there's loads of questions that we're doing market research just now on putting that together, because it's such a sensitive issue that we need to make sure we get it right. I don't want to end up with something that is counterproductive, because we haven't done our proper research and our proper preparation, and I also want to make sure that we end up with a marketing campaign that's effective and targeted at the right people. You reckon it's going to be a positive campaign more than ever? Absolutely, yes. Thank you very much. Does anyone have any other questions that they'd like to ask the cabinet secretary? Thank you, convener. I just wondered how direct support payments, how that would fit in. I know of not that much time, but would we be able to write to the cabinet secretary, would we get an update on that? How that would work in with, obviously, health and social care? Self-directance is what you mean, Sandra. Self-directance support. Sorry, yes, self-directance support. Absolutely, and I'm sure David will make sure that you get a comprehensive reply to that. It might be useful, actually. I don't know if we've got the stats, if we're able to identify how many members of the Gypsy Traveller community are already on self-directance support. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary and officials, for coming along and giving us that information. We'll take up your offer and write to you, asking some other questions as well. That concludes the public part of today's meeting. Our next meeting will take place on Thursday 5 March. I'll now suspend the meeting for the committee to move into private session.


This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Welcome to another episode of Likeable Science here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host Ethan Allen. With me today in the Think Tech studios is Pam Chambers. Hi. Welcome Pam. Nice to have you back here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Pam is a author, presenter, coach, speaker. All these wonderful things has done a number of books, speak for yourself, stand and deliver life as a presentation and her most recent. Not this again. And this is Lessons on Leadership for Hawaii and we're going to be talking about leadership in Hawaii. But first, I want to tell you a little story, Pam, and you'll think this has nothing to do with what we're going to talk about, but it really does. So you know what ants live in colonies, right? And lots and lots of ants together in pretty tight space. So when an ant dies, of course, they can't just leave it there to rot, right? Other worker ants pick the dead body up, take it outside and throw it on the trash, basically, right?   And it was very clear they were getting the message that she was dead, basically, from this chemical, this pheromone, and all she knew perfectly well she wasn't. But anyhow. So what does that have to do with what we're going to talk about here, presentation and leadership, right? I can't wait to find out. Well, a theme in this wonderful book, not this again, is that there's a real feedback loop that goes on between leaders and the people that are working for them, the followers we'll call them. Just as there is feedback loop and you were talking about this at a speaker's association meeting a while ago, the feedback between a presenter and the audience. And it's not just a one-way flow of information, both parties have to be both presenting and receiving for whether or not they know it, right? And if this communication breaks down in any way, things don't go well, right? And so in this case, the chemical signal was completely overriding the physical signal, although the ant was waving its feet and all. Yes, the ant was totally misunderstood. The worker ant basically ignored that signal and just said, nope, you've got the death stink on you, basically. We're hacking you out, you know. Nice, just a complete breakdown of communication there. That's a great analogy. Well, yeah, just, I was thinking about it. I like these little campfire stories sometimes. Anyhow, tell us maybe how you came to write this book or why you chose to write it. I was in a workshop and I was announcing to the people in the workshop what their survey results were. And they just looked at me blankly. And I said, do you not know about these surveys and the results? And they just looked at me blankly. And I said, we don't get enough feedback. And then I kept thinking about that. And I thought it's true almost everywhere I go that people are not being given enough feedback or information that would help them be better caregivers in this case. So then I kind of thought about all the different places I've been and taught and trained. And I thought, I bet there are other problems that are equally prevalent. So I made a list and it was 20. I shrunk it down to 18 challenges that business leaders in Hawaii face, in particular. Right, there is a very Hawaii focus there. Right, and then I asked certain leaders, I asked many leaders, will you supply me with a story? And you'd be surprised how many people, maybe you wouldn't. Not surprisingly, a lot of people didn't want to do that because they didn't want to be public about what their problems are. So the book is full of Valerie and Robert. But then you'll see in the shaded sections of the book are true stories with real names and real company names. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it brings up the sort of the truism that was popularized in that old movie Cool Ham Luke some while ago about what we have here as a failure to communicate. This is often you read these lessons as you're talking about them and the boss is saying something and the employee isn't hearing it or the employee is saying something and the boss isn't hearing it or they're misunderstanding one another. And so it is a very prevalent commonplace thing. I've certainly experienced it in it and organizations small and large that I've worked in. Yeah, and families and neighborhoods and board meetings, it happens everywhere. And it's not only in Hawaii of course, but this is about some of the reasons why we have problems and challenges of our own here. Right, and there's a very interesting cultural issues that you touch on here about that that we have a really peculiar or peculiar juxtaposition here where we've got a bunch of different cultures all meeting together with their own styles of communication. We sometimes I do a lot of work out in Micronesia and we talk about the Micronesian yes, which is basically because they tend to be very polite people and they don't want to offend you. So if you ask them, can we do something or whatever? And they'll always say yes, even when they've got absolutely no intention doing it. Oh, wow. And you have to learn to dig a little deeper, ask it in different ways or ask their friend, will they do this or whatever to find out if it's really a yes that I can believe or is it just a yes that they were saying not. If you were to pay attention to their body language, would that be helpful? There might be good clues. We should get to R.B. Kelly on this on time. Ask her about it. So there are a lot of parallels, though, between doing a public presentation and being a leader. I mean, both people are sort of in charge as it were. Both are, though, very dependent on their followers or their audience to be supportive of them in some sense. And there are dangers if either of them doesn't communicate properly. Right, right. So talk a little bit about some of this. Some of this sort of what the psychology that you were saying. OK, well, one of your questions to me in advance, thank you for those. I had to do with what types of presentations are leaders really needing to be good at. So I made a few notes to answer that. So I'm thinking of a new employee orientation. So you have 20 new employees in a large firm. Well, they need to know the rules. They need to know what's expected of them. And so they go to these new employee orientations. And if the speaker, the leader, whoever's leading that, seems either bored or apathetic or unclear or unmotivating, then just imagine how you might feel sitting in that room. Gee, if I made a big mistake. So there's that giving any types of new directions, new instructions, new procedures, we have to say what it is and why. And a lot of times the why is left out. And so people aren't, they're just not, they don't have the oomph that it takes to follow through because they don't understand the why behind the what. Right, they don't hear it, they don't own it, they don't believe in it, basically. Yes, exactly.  And I would call that poor leadership. Right, but it's essentially poor public presentation, right? Yes, they're not public speaking well enough.  Aloha United Way rallies are a good example of that. So yes, and a lot of leaders, they don't study enough how to be better at that and they may not get feedback about how they're not as good as they could be. Who's gonna tell them? Right, yeah, and will they hear it? Even if they are told it, will they dismiss that in some way or will they just not hear it? So knock on wood that that's a problem because that's often when I get brought in is, could you tell him that? Do people really do that? They bring you in to deliver? One example that is so profoundly unbelievable to me is a man asked me to come in and work one-on-one with one of his vice presidents. So both leaders are fairly high up there. And I said, what do you want me to help him with? And he said, you'll see. So when I went in there, the man was sitting, it's hard to do this with my jacket so tight, but he was sitting with his hands laced behind his head leaning back in his chair, this client of mine. And he sat that way for several minutes. And I finally when I felt like the rapport was good enough, I said, can I give you some feedback about your body language?  But he didn't even change, he kept sitting that same way. And I said, I'm concerned that you will be misunderstood when you sit that way, that people might think that you're aloof or not engaged or that you think this is beneath you somehow. And he sat up straight and he leaned in and he said, no one's ever told me that before. And I said, I know, or even your boss, why would that be so hard to say to somebody? Yeah, yeah, but it's true, I mean, people do read these non-verbal cues, that's a clear part of that communication. Right, he could be fully engaged, but he doesn't look like it. So that's what I'm gonna believe, not whatever might be happening in his head. Right, and again, he may, in his own brain, be 100% there focused on what you're saying and everything. He may have just learned this relaxed posture or whatever, that's his sort of quirky thing, right?  Right, right. Here's how I want you to sit.  Right, right. Or not telling them why you need to have someone at the desk the minute the office is open, not someone skidding in at the last minute. You know, why? So that you look ready, prepared, hospitable. Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And yes, so. You asked how people can learn these things. How would a leader learn how to be a better communicator? And there are many ways. They could videotape themselves. They could, just like what we're doing right here, they could videotape themselves being on your show and then they could look at it and see what they think should be changed. It is intriguing, actually. Years ago, when I was practicing for a talk, I'd just gotten some access to some video equipment and I thought, oh, this would be great. I'll videotape myself. It was amazing the first time you see yourself trying to talk and videotape. Oh, yes. And you have no clue about all the ticks and nervous mannerisms, the postures.  Just, you know. Right, right, right. And so, the video is one, observing people that they consider to be good communicators and saying, what is it that I think is so great about this person as a communicator and trying to model some of that behavior? Or you can take classes. There's Dale Carnegie. There's the Pam Chambers course. There's Toastmasters that anyone can join. And there, you would get feedback. Maybe not as much as you should, but you would get some feedback. And then, getting feedback from surveys. You can survey your customers and say, in terms of our communication with you, how did we do? And ask specific questions about that. Yeah, and these days, that's easier and easier to do, right? There are all kinds of these online apps now that allow you to do interactive question and answer groups in real time, anonymously. I was just doing one the other day at a rotary meeting where the speaker had one of these going and we all broke out our phones and he was asking us questions and we were watching how many people give quite an answer. Oh, right, there's a name for that. I forget the name, that's, yeah. There's several different versions of it around that. Right, right, right. But yeah, it's, and yet, people don't do it. You know, people won't, they won't give that feedback. Look at, is it TripAdvisor, they want you to say your name.  So, the anonymousness makes it possibly easier to be critical, but who, like the guy with his hands back there, who, what inferior person to him is gonna tell him anything about that? Right, yeah. We're afraid to do that. Yeah, and it's odd because a fair number of people do understand with that example that body language means something and you're supposed to sort of mimic the body language of somebody when you're talking with them in order to establish commonalities. Interesting sort of vision, his meetings. Well, maybe now he's completely dropped that habit, I hope so. Well, you asked about losing consequences, or the consequences if you lose your ability to speak well and so, or don't ever gain it in the first place, you could lose some credibility if you're not a good speaker. You could lose face if you're not a good speaker. You could lose employees if you're not a good speaker. There's a lot at stake, and I just think we're not paying enough attention to that. I tend to agree. I think we often don't think about that enough. We're gonna go more deeply into this, but right now I'm told we have to take a quick break. I'm Ethan Allen, you're watching Likeable Science. I'm here with Pam Chambers, and we'll be back in a minute. Aloha, I'm Winston Welch, and every other Monday at 3 p.m., you can join me at Out and About, a show where we explore a variety of topics, organizations, events, and the people who fuel them in our city, state, country, and world. So please join us every other Monday at 3, and we'll see you then. Aloha. Hi, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark, and every Monday at one o'clock, I present Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa, where we bring together researchers from across the campus to describe a whole series of scientifically interesting topics of interest both to Hawaii and around the world. So hopefully you can join me one o'clock Monday afternoon for Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa. And you're back here on Likeable Science on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Ethan Allen. With me today here in Think Tech Studios is Pam Chambers, speaker, author, extraordinaire, public speaker, presenter, coach, all these different roles. We're talking about her book, Not This Again, where there are just 18 lessons, challenges that Hawaii's leaders face, and sort of lessons on how to overcome these challenges. And we were speaking earlier a little bit about the unique nature of Hawaii. And you talk about one of the aspects in here about the sort of island time idea, right? And people have very different ideas. Type A people who show up always at least a few months early for a meeting, would never think of being late versus people who take a much different attitude. And it's not to say one's right, one's wrong, but there are expectations in certainly in the business world. I would call it the first time I was down in American Samoa being shocked because we had set up to do workshops with teachers that were gonna be in at four o'clock, I think. And so I'm there, of course, plenty early. Four o'clock comes and there's nobody there. Four, 15, one or two people start drifting in. Four, 30, a few more drift in. Quarter, five, getting to get a little bit of a crowd. By five o'clock, there were a fair number of people there. Not a one of them apologized or thought, no, this was just, this was just accepted. This was very normal, meeting started when they started and people showed up when they showed up. And that was, if I was gonna get upset about it, that wasn't gonna do me any good. That wasn't gonna change their behavior or so. Did any circumstance cause them to be on time? I really haven't found, it's just a very different, the whole mindset when you've grown up, particularly on these really small islands that have been basically self-sufficient for generations, there's this whole attitude that things will happen when they need to happen and there's no sort of need for that level of structure and organization and time slots and all because you don't need it. So, why, it's just not in the mindset. One of the contributors to this book had a really interesting point of view about what we call Hawaiian time. He said that he had a client who was a member of a team and his job was to do a certain task to contribute to this project. And he kept not turning it in, he kept not turning it in. And my friend asked him, what is the holdup? And he said, it's not good enough yet. It's not good enough yet for our team. So, he was thinking about the whole group and how it would be for the team as opposed to his own. Whereas I might be more, this is my job and here it is. Yes, and again, I think that highlights a real difference in sort of mainstream US culture. We are very individualistic. The small islands are forced to be much more community thinker, so they have to consider what is good for the group because when you live on a little island with 200 people who are there from the time you're born until the time you die and nobody else, it's very important that you all get along well, that you work well together. And we see this, I mean, we've seen things where young, very talented kids are offered scholarships to go to great schools and all and turn them down because no, they're expected to stay on island and take care of their young cousins or their nieces. That's the expectation and they will forego their own betterment and their own advancement to deal with what the community expects. For the sake of the group. Yeah, yeah. Right, one of the challenges here, I think has to do with the diversity. So, if we were in, oh, a big San Francisco or Boston, there would be more of us alike than different. But here, there are so many different cultures that as a speaker, you could look out at 100 people and there would be some people who need to be in the back row and other people who need to be in the front row and other people who will never talk no matter what you do, other people that will take over and people with varying degrees of understanding of the English language even. So, a speaker, a leader has to be able to play to all of that. Right, and understand that the subtle different signals. All right, if you've got a staff where you have people who are very shy, very polite, by their cultural upbringing and other people who are brash go get them individualists, yeah, you're gonna have to adjust your presentation style as it were to these different people to really get the best out of both of them, right? I remember a training once that had about, about half the people in the training were police officers and the others weren't.  Sure, guns, guns, yes. And it was amazing what happened when the officers were done with their portion of the training and excused themselves how the energy in the room changed. Really? Yes, I mean, the people really came to life whereas they had been suppressing, almost trying to be invisible, almost. Yeah, well, I mean, people do that. I mean, there's been wonderful studies done when they have someone, for instance, cross an intersection against a light and if you put the same person in the cloth, the shabby clothes looking like a bum, nobody follows them. You put them in sort of normal attire, a few people follow them. You put a uniform on them and crowds will follow them across against the light. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we all, again, it's part of that whole communication thing that we're talking about, that feedback loop. It's like, oh, well, this person has... And it's unspoken. Right, yeah. It's not spoken. And often unacknowledged even in our own minds, right? Right, right, right. Now, why am I following this guy? Right, you wouldn't know. Even when we see something approaching someone and we decide, I think I'm gonna cross the street now, that's where reading, we're assessing the situation and deciding that it would be safer if we were on that side of the street. Yeah, yeah. When we have to be assessing like that. Yeah, again, this ties back to our sort of biological roots, right? We had to be very good at reading body language and intention because if you didn't, you probably didn't pass on your genes, right? Yeah. Right, and you were wondering earlier about how a leader can adapt to the Hawaiian culture or the culture in Hawaii, I should say. Right. I think they need to have a mentor. I mean, I've seen in the 36 years that I've been here, I've seen people come and go, people from the mainland in particular who come and they just don't fit in, they never learn to fit in and they may leave in some kind of shame or rejection even because they didn't have anyone say, here's how it works here. Here's what is expected. Here's what this means. Here's what that doesn't mean. And wouldn't it be great if they had a mentor? Oh yeah, wouldn't it, yeah. To explain, take your shoes off, to explain, don't arrive empty handed even if people said no gifts, that doesn't mean no gifts. I think we need to have more of that than we do. Yeah, that sort of structured mentoring is really great. My sister did her career in the Navy and one of the things she spoke of that I always thought was such a great idea, when she first entered as an ensign, she'd gone through officer's candidate school, they assigned her basically a career coach officer basically whose job it was basically to say, okay Lois, they're gonna move you every two years.  Why do we need to position you geographically, sort of professionally and sort of help guide her along? She left the Navy as a captain, so. Oh my goodness, that must have been very helpful. Yeah, I've always, why don't they do this in the real world? Right, right, right, right. I mean, we're supposed to vaguely do that in academia, right, you have advisors at various stages but they usually only wanna track you in their pathways, right? Right. This is what I think you need. Right, right. Of course that is a, again it's a sort of a danger and leadership, right, is that leaders sometimes have relatively narrow views of what they want their followers to do, right, and just drive them or pull them in that one direction.  Ways to keep engagement going between leaders and followers would be to get up and move around once in a while, get out, manage by walking around, I heard it called once.  What is going on in my company? Yeah, it's funny, I work with a relatively smaller group now, our new CEO, when he came on board base and said, no, I'm not gonna use the CEO of the office, I'm gonna sit out in the main room with everyone else. Oh, wow. And just, it makes a tremendous difference in terms of the ambiance of the place. It's like, oh, we're just all sort of sitting around here and getting stuff done. Do people like it? Oh yeah, everyone agrees it's a much healthier energy there. But yeah, it is particularly, I think, in a very multicultural area like Hawaii, that's probably even more critical, right? If you've got a bunch of, if you're supervising a bunch of people who are very much like yourself, it's probably relatively easy to check in once or twice and know what's going on, but the different people with different styles, differing amounts of what they're gonna put out, what they're gonna hide inside, you probably need much more time to spend with them to sort of watch for the subtle signals that they are happy or are happy. Right, and leaders need to know, one of the chapters is about, should I talk to this one guy alone or should I talk to the whole group about this thing? And often people feel safer in the group, in the herd, than they do separate from the herd. And so to single someone out and pull them into your office to get their input about something, you're probably not going to get the truth. Yeah, that's a very delicate business. So there are issues that you can't discuss in the group, right, and you need to talk to them. Well, there was one story in there about a leader who found out that one of her employees ate the same stinky food every day. And the meetings after lunch were filled with unpleasant fumes. And she wanted me to deal with that. And I said, oh, come on, let me teach you how to deal with that. And she wouldn't have any of it. So it turns out that it was the right thing to do to talk to the group about that so that they wouldn't eat that same lunch, too. Right, yeah, it wouldn't become a cultural thing. Right, oh, let's all go to it, but I won't name it a place, but there was kimchi and daikon involved. And so it would have been a mistake to pull him aside. Absolutely. Well, Pam, as always, it's great fun talking with you. I'm told we're running out of time. Okay. It seemed like it was just a moment ago we started chatting here. But again, Pam Chambers, not this again, you know? It's a great book, very good for anyone, leaders or followers to read. Thank you. Thank you, Pam, for coming on here again. And we'll see you in on. Okay, all right. Thank you so much. Yes, indeed. Thanks. And we'll see you next week. I'm Ethan Allen, signing off on Likeable Science on ThinkDec Hawaii.


Hey guys, it's Nate, A.K. The Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. We have two, yes, two big SBCs that are coming very soon to this game of FIFA 22 Ultimate Team. To take a look at today, those two SBCs are the Ben Yetter Player of the Month and another party bag SBC, which includes Future Stars from team number two. So we're gonna talk about both of those today, release dates, how much could they cost, how do we know they're coming for sure, talk about a little bit of a leak scenario with that Ben Yetter and also packs being added to the code in the sense of the party bags and also just talk about how this market is catching on after rewards yesterday, after a lot of icon related content, two brand new icon SBCs with PrimeDrogba and Mid Eto, along with two new icon upgrade SBCs in the Prime or Mid or Prime upgrade pack repeatable and also the mid icon player pick. So we got not one but two icon upgrade packs yesterday along with the 81 plus player pick, which I think is seen as not quite as good as last week's 80 plus times three, but still maybe feasible. So we'll talk about that today as well in the video, how things are affecting the market and kind of what happened on the game yesterday with all of that. So if you're excited for another party bag or for a Ben Yetter, the rat player of the month, make sure to hit a thumbs up on the video and of course subscribe if you're new. Well, let's get into it and talk about this SBC that everybody's probably gonna wanna do for a new French striker in their teams. You know everybody right now is running with the league one links. We got the flashback Namor, we've had so many SBCs out that are France, that are league one and even though this is a player of the month, so this is not determined by EA sports. This is on a vote, it's determined by the league one. This is Ben Yetter is the confirmed winner of the player of the month. Now this SBC is probably not gonna be out until Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. It's probably not gonna be today. I'd be very surprised if it was. Usually player of the month is released a little bit later in the week, especially for league one. But in the next coming days, we will see this. Now what we do know about this Ben Yetter is these are not confirmed stats, but these are pretty probable stats because when cards are below 90 rated, their player of the month are usually a plus two overall boost. So Ben Yetter going from his 86 rated inform card, this is his last performance based item.  Now I would love it if EA broke the rules and made him an 89 rated, but this is not a performance based card. It's only a special campaign or promo card. So I doubt that Ben Yetter is gonna be 89, although I would have no complaints if he was. This SBC in this card, it's gonna be at a very interesting price point I think. I'm really curious to see how EA values this SBC when they do drop it.   He was 65K and still now he's 60,000 coins, right? I really think that this inform, if this 87 signature signings Ben Yetter was actually an inform, he would probably be like 150K. So I would imagine that this player of the month Ben Yetter is probably not gonna be like a 500,000 coin plus SBC unless EA are really looking at this signature signings version and gonna overpriced the SBC. I think this card is already overpriced for where he is and where we are at in this game just to be honest. Even though it's a very meta card, very popular card since it's a promo item and it's a lot more rare than like an inform or something like that, I just feel like they should price this SBC around like 250 to 350,000 coins. That's I think where it should be. That's where a lot of people would A, want to do it and B, I think it's pretty fair. So yes, I could see it being 400, 500,000 coins if EA want to overpriced it a little bit. One thing that EA do with Player of the Months since they're not 100% over that content, they don't decide the Player of the Month. So if they don't want a lot of people to do this SBC, even though they have to put it out because they have the contract with the Lee gun and all these other leagues to release their Player of the Months as SBCs and FIFA, you know, they can make this very expensive if they want to so that less people will do it, but it's Ben Yetter. So this time around for FIFA purposes, a lot of people are going to be looking forward to this SBC and wanting to do this card. So I think anywhere between 250 and 400K is a pretty reasonable range, although it could be on the higher end of things if fodder does stay a little bit inflated as it kind of is right now. But again, this is an SBC that everybody would love to do because Ben Yetter that he is, I mean, we've had some other French strikers in this game this year, but Ben Yetter is still, he is the rat, right?  You would only imagine that it would be higher on a new Player of the Month. I mean, this Player of the Month Ben Yetter would be an SBC that a lot of people would like to do for a French striker in their teams for at least for a pretty long time, right? This could be a card, a Player of the Month version could be a card that you put in your squad for a long time and then a lot of people would like to use. So, you know, he's got the great traits as well. Outside foot, leadership, chip shot, team player, technical dribbler, it's just a great card overall, you know, right? Ben Yetter is just a FIFA guy. So there's gonna be a lot of pipe around that SBC and you know, we haven't really seen a lot of the French strikers drop as of yet, but just depending on the price of this Ben Yetter when it drops, you know, other cards like Anthony Martial or I think of Kingsley, Colman, both have Winter Wildcard versions. These could be items, I don't even know how much Martial is these days after the markets just tanked so much. He's how much, 470,000 coins and Colman I think is like right around 400,000 coins as well. I mean, these cards, you're gonna have to keep an eye on them. Wow, Colman bounced back. He was like, he was down like 410K, he's down 450, but you know, you're gonna have to keep an eye on some of these cards because I think that they could drop if this Ben Yetter player of the month is priced correctly and you might start see people selling a few of these off as we head throughout the next days as this SBC is coming very soon. And of course, French Ligo and Lynx are already up in price because of Neymar and because that's where EA is putting out a lot of content right now in this game. So that's a big SBC to talk about. Another one, now this one's a little bit more official. Now, you know, we have a leak for Ben Yetter, but it's a player of the month leak. So that's pretty legit, right? Because player of the month, that's not like, you know, something that's up to a leaker to find out. That's like gonna be posted by the league one and that's legit. So that's, you know, a leak, but also confirmed. Something a little bit even more hardcore and confirmed is pack code, right? And we have another pack code to talk about. This SBC could come as early as today on Tuesday. Last week on Thursday, we had the first party bag, but even this week, we might have one today on Tuesday, maybe another on Thursday. Maybe they just drop one either today or Thursday. I feel like that's kind of our options with this SBC, but this is the pack code contains one player from Winter Wild Cards, honorable mentions, Future Stars Team one and two. So it's basically the exact same SBC as last week, but it includes Future Stars Team number two. Now we all remember that last week, this SBC was incredibly cheap. 43,000 coins for this party bag that we thought might be 100,000 coins. And some people thought it was gonna be even more expensive than that. And fodder was still kind of up last week as well. As you can see, it was 50K at the start and then dropped into the weekend as fodder got cheaper. Now I think that this party bag SBC is probably gonna come out around as the same price. I would imagine that even though there's Future Stars Team two inside of it, maybe they make it like, you know, 10,000 coins more expensive. And I believe last time around, what was it like an 83 squad or an 84 squad with 70 chemistry is what it was. Maybe this time around they add an informed requirement or something like that to bump the price up like 10, 15,000 coins because they're adding in the squad of Future Stars two. That's possible. But this is something that again, they were so bad last week. If you guys remember, like so many people were packing winter wild cards or honorable mention Banuchi or cards like that that weren't very, you know, hype, but as a really, really cheap gamble SBC, everybody's gonna go out and do this again. So just like we talked about last week for the cards that are a part of this team, if there is panic selling on any of those winter wild cards or even some of the Future Stars that are at the mid-tier, like maybe somebody like Kakere, right? A very hype card right now in this game with all the links that he has, 202,000 coins. Let's say this guy in the panic selling, he's still in packs of course, but for this party bag, let's say he drops a bunch like right after it's released, he'll probably get packed a semi decent amount because I see impact pretty often from 85 times tens, but this is still a card that has a lot of demand and not everybody's gonna pack him. So you would look for that kind of card to drop in panic selling, then rebound a little bit after that SBC would come out. Same thing, especially for your out of packs cards like the winter wild cards, the same thing that we went over last week, probably gonna happen again with another version of the party bag. Now again, that is not guaranteed to happen today on Tuesday, but I think it's possible, right? I think if I remember correctly, in the last two weeks, we have had gamble SBCs on Monday and Tuesday of each week. I think the last week had like the 84 plus and then I forget what we had on Tuesday a week ago, but I would imagine that they would drop, you know, stuff when it gets added into the pack code, a lot of times it comes out the next day, specifically for packs. So that's kind of something to just keep an eye on and watch out for that SBC coming today. Of course, yesterday we had a lot of SBC content, like we had seven new SBCs, which was pretty crazy. The 81 player picks included. So I would think that maybe EA goes with a bit of a slower day of content today on Tuesday, where they release a party bag or some sort of SBC like that. And then that's kind of our content for the day. Really not sure, but that is my best guess for what might be happening today on Tuesday. So those are the two SBCs that are news, right? And again, that Ben Yetter is down, a lot of the other places on the market in terms of strikers really aren't down. I flipped three teams of group stage, Ronaldo's today, I bought all of these for 1.2 and then one of them for 1.15 and sold them for 1.3, he was just down a lot, right? As I talked about that Kingsley-Colman as well, there was still some panic selling on the market yesterday that did rebound back up on that Winter Wildcards Coleman. I remember seeing him under 420K and now he's back up to 450, like 460 as we saw, right? So 423, 20K of tax is probably not really flippable but I'll let Footbin catch that and see if anybody wants to undercut and then maybe we'll flip it or maybe I'll stay away because Ben Yetter played the month. But speaking of the market right now, I'm talking about yesterday's content. I feel like the biggest piece of content yesterday was again the icon upgrade SBCs and the 81 plus player pick. Now this 81 plus player pick, yes people are gonna do it because it's still a player pick and if you take a look on Footbin, it does have a decently high percentage of upvotes but it does require five rares and after last week's SBC was so great, the 80 plus player pick with three options instead of two required three rares and only like what was it, like seven or eight players? It was such a good SBC. This one seems to be a step back in terms of value but it's still not terrible. So just kind of try a few of these, see if they work out for your account. They're not gonna be as grindable as last week but they'll still be doable I guess. 6,000 coins a piece for one of these, basically five to six K if you get some of them on bid but yeah potential to pack of course some of the future stars items, the team of the week when it comes out. So not bad for fodder and then having the chance of packing a card from the promo team but of the icon upgrades that were out yesterday too, you can see everybody was not very hyped for the mid icon player pick even though it's a player pick and still a decent amount of people go and do it because it's an icon player pick and you get three options. 635,000 coins. I had a lot of people ask me yesterday, Nate, which one's better to do? I would point you towards a mid or prime pack because especially with lower rated squads required and it's 400,000 coins instead of 600,000 coins for the player pick SBC. I thought this one was much better value because you can also pack prime cards, right? You can pack primes, not just mids but I understand people wanting to do the player picks as well. So if you were doing any of these, at least you probably have some untradable fodder in the club from the 85 times 10, which was nice. And also we had two icon SBCs yesterday, player SBCs in drug butt and Eto and both of these, Eto has a 54% of vote rate but in my opinion, this is an L. This SBC is again overpriced as they commonly have been this year with the icon SBCs. This Eto card last week was like 1.1 million coins before the market went crazy with all the stuff that has been going on in the past two days with the Neymar, with the R9 leaks and stuff like that. So he was 1.1 million coins, which you know, when EA maybe priced this SBC out a week ago before they released it, they're like, okay, we'll make it a million and then boom, it'll be 100K less than what is on the market. But again, this is what we see so often with icons this year is that they priced the SBC so close to the going rate on the market and then the leaks come out that this SBC is coming or we have a market crash in general and all of a sudden the card on the market is like way cheaper than what the SBC price is.  It's just not that great of value and it's a bit underwhelming, but I guess I'm not surprised because that's the way that it's been all year. Same thing with Drogba, right? 38% upvotes, so even less for him. His SBC's 550,000 coins, his prime icon card is 400K and he's been there, right? I mean, even before this was out, he was 583,000 coins kind of in that range before the SBC came out and now his SBC is, you know, more than that. So that's just again, underwhelming for both of those two cards. We also had a Diogo Jota eSports kit that was dropped at a really weird time. I didn't even see this until like halfway, an hour and a half after content or something, it was dropped. So a lot of icon related SBCs and this is one thing I wanna talk about as well just for a bit in this video is with all of this icon content, it feels like EA is getting you thinking about icons, right? They want you to think about icon SBCs. They want you to think about icon upgrade packs. Everybody wants to know when icon swaps is gonna be released probably pretty soon. It's that timeframe again where we are nearing the next release for the new types of icons on this game. I feel like it's gonna be pretty soon here this week when we start to hear moments, icons, rumors. So just be very careful. What you have especially, some of these mid to high tier icon cards, I know they've already dropped down on price a lot but I think of icons that are like over a million coins, maybe like a Puchkas mid, maybe like this Maradona, maybe a version of Petit, that's not over a million coins, that's just the price there that's very high. But some of these icons that are above a million coins, the moments are gonna come on the market and I really think they're gonna be pretty affordable than other years just because that's how the market is this year, right? So I would be a little bit worried, not worried but just aware, aware that that stuff is coming very, very soon and if you have some of these cards tradable in your team, this might be one of a, not a last call but kind of like we're getting to almost that time where you're gonna see a lot of these prices fall off even more as there's brand new icons out on the game that people will want to go and try, right? Wow, Frayna Torres is seven or K. I haven't looked at like top tier icons in a hot minute. How much is Eusebio, two four, two one? So Eusebio's like 2.1 mil, I mean, but when a moment's card comes out, there's gonna be a lot of other icons that have really cool boosts with dynamic images and that's the cool thing about icon moments. We'll probably talk about that a little bit more later on this week as we get closer to that but icon moments are the coolest versions of icons that drop during the whole year and they have those dynamic images, they have stats that change from year to year and there's just a lot of hype with them. So just be careful and that's just another little, I guess, warning you could say about that but again, the main point I was trying to get to there is that it just feels like EA is really pushing a lot of people to get thinking about icons, right? And that gets you in that icon mode and then that'd be a perfect time for them to drop icon moments into this game. So it's kind of been building up to that but we are there again. Now I wanna talk about SBC Fodder for a second. We just talked about new SBCs that are coming. Yesterday fodder moved up a little bit but not really that much. 84s went up to about five to five and a half K. They were kind of the biggest movers yesterday. I bet if we take a look at the index 84 it climbed decently well. Yeah, it climbed pretty well yesterday with some of those SBCs that were released like the mid prime pack, which most people I think did that required an 84 and two 84 and 85 squad. Like some of that lower tier fodder was more in demand than the upper tier stuff. So your 84s, 85s are up but then the rest of fodder across the market is just up a little bit, right? You can see the cheapest 87s on the market are actually all promo cards. Gonzalo Ramos, Tyler Adams and Nunez 24, 25 K apiece. 88s are 33 K. So if you bought fodder on the weekend, GGs you're looking really good. Honestly, keep holding. Why not, right? There's not gonna be a lot of supply unless EA dropped something crazy which we haven't seen them doing a long time so you wouldn't really expect it. You might as well keep holding this, right? If we do get a party bag, if we do get more player SBCs, a Ben Yetter, right? For goodness sake, a Ben Yetter player of the month that's another SBC with a lot of demand and a lot of potential hype that a lot of people would like to do. So that's just gonna make this fodder stuff probably continue to rise a little bit more throughout this week as you do not have that much supply. So GGs, if you did get in on fodder and also the market's been a really good place to trade. It really has. I know that so many things have been down. I made a lot of coins in the past two days. I bought Gravenburg Sunday night, Monday morning right around here for 700,000 coins. Sold them for 770. He's even gone a little higher in the 780s. A lot of these future stars have fluctuated. Pedri, as we looked at last night in the video I didn't win that bid but he's up at like almost 1.95. Lecquois is up in price. A decent amount of Verts has been fluctuating around. Farin Torres moved. I would be very careful with Tomiasu's center back because this is the same thing that happened with the right back version. The right back version was down and like 35K, I think at his lowest, 30,000 coins. He's now up to 52K. I'd be very careful with the center back version. It's 80K and I think it just hasn't had a lot of supply yet since it was only in packs on Sunday. So I think this card's gonna still drop off a decent amount more in the next coming days. Maybe as we have a party bag, right? A party bag would drop this card's price a lot because people would pack it a decent amount again from a team one or team two version of Tomiasu's. So just be kind of careful about that. And same thing with like Elmas, who I packed for my 85 times 10, or any of these lower tier cards that still feel like they might have lower to drop. Maybe Yabanya is 39K. He might go a little bit lower. Brian Hill, even though this card looks cracked, still could go a little bit lower. And then for the rest of the market in general for like just trading purposes, Neymar's gold is even lower, 155,000 coins. As so many people are going and doing the SBC. Ginola's 695K. Some of your league one cards though continue to rise. Chalmini, after the Ben-Yetter, leaks actually went up. He was like 1.08. He kind of spiked to 1.175. Now he's down a little bit at 1.18 since that would be a perfect link to Ben-Yetter. Genduzi is 270. Neymar's other special cards rebounded back up from crazy lows that they were at. And Bappe is still chilling. Messi is still chilling. So a lot of stuff is still really, really low, but it does fluctuate, right? It does. Smith-Rowe was like 500K flat. Now he's up to 540K. And like I mentioned with the Ronaldo's that I was trading with. I also bought some Joao Felix numbers up which I think he's actually back down. And this is not probably helping that we have the Ben-Yetter leak that is going on right now. But these really rare cards that fluctuate a lot in the market. I mean, this guy was just 500K a minute ago and I bought two of these right around 500. But I'm not gonna sell, right? Cause I think he might go back up to like 530 or 540. I bought a Lucas Mora for 517,000 coins and he was 550 for a hot second. And right now he's back down again, right? So could this card with only two pages to 550 go back up there? I think he absolutely could. Tuesday mornings are decently high time on the market. Although people will see the party bag code maybe get a little bit scared for that. And that could cause maybe a little bit of panic sale this morning, but a 40,000, 50,000 coin party bag SBC isn't gonna break the market. So that's my thoughts on that. And EA finally added the foot versus fire and ice. Literally December 10th is when these cards came on the game and we just got the graphics in here for the search filter and the quality search here in the transfer market. It's crazy. They finally added that. Happy Valentine's to you from EA Sports, I guess, is what that, that's the message that is perceived to me on this game. So it might be an interesting day of Tuesday content, right? Party bag potential, but again, everybody's gonna be looking forward to that Ben Yetter SBC coming later on this week, probably Thursday. That's my guess for that, but Wednesday, Thursday or Friday for that SBC. The party bag either today, probably or Thursday, one of those two. Other than that, we don't have a lot of, we have a lot of outstanding leaks that we might not end up seeing that we're still like, where's Bale? Where's R9? All that stuff, kind of waiting and just hoping also for some of that content to be dropped. So let me know down in the comments what you guys thought of yesterday's content. I feel like for some people, it was probably a bit lackluster. Not everybody wants to go spend 500,000 coins to do an icon SBC right after they did and Neymar, which they're very excited about. So I feel like that's where a lot of people were in the game yesterday. 81 plus player picks are just okay. So yesterday just felt kind of like this, right?  So we'll see if they drop that today on Tuesday. But if you enjoyed this video, smash the thumbs up on it, comment down below if you have any questions and of course, subscribe if you do. It has been Nate, The Foot Account and I'll catch you guys later. Peace out.