Hello everyone, welcome back to this material characterization course. In the last class, we just reviewed the electron optical systems and its governing principles and electron lens design and it is analogy with the light optical system. And I mentioned that we will discuss the aberrations in this class. And as I mentioned in the fundamentals of the optical system, we have gone through all the types of aberrations which the glass lens will exhibit. Other type of aberrations will also the electron optical system will encounter and then since we have already seen them in much more detailed manner about what is the each aberration and its definition, I will just mention how this is taken care in this electron optical system and then we will take up some few examples and some of the numerical significance of a spherical and chromatic aberrations. As we all know, this spherical aberration is very important and inherent to these lenses in light optical glass lenses as well as in the electro magnetic lenses. And we also appreciate that this is one particular aberration which directly influence the resolution of the microscope and we will see them in little more detail. So now we will go to this lens aberration and optical resolution with regard to this electron optical system. You look at this schematic, what you are just seeing is a lens plane and where you have the range of alpha that is aperture angle and then you see that look at this ray tracing path and then each ray is focusing at different different direction and basically and this is a region we say that the disc of a least confusion and then and if you look at this all this pair of rays intersecting the image plane at a different point and then eventually you see this aberration disc in the image plane. So the point you have to remember here is it is a general schematic which is shown here and whatever the aberration we talk about whether it could be a simple astigmatism to chromatic to spherical aberration all what all these aberrations they do to this light ray are electron beam they have they are directing this electron beam into a different focal point whether it is on axis or off axis that we have seen. So if you just think of all the aberrations which impact the resolution of the optical system or electromagnetic lens system it is the total combination of all this aberrations put together. So you can consider this schematic a general schematic where you see this the distance delta not is the de-focusing condition and this is also considered as the disc of least confusion and then you see the aberration disc which we have already seen in the beginning and then you see that delta optimum with associated with the electron lens in general. So the resolution becomes the total aberration dependent to a large degree on the half angle subtended from the image by the lens aperture as designated alpha this we have already seen. So I want to emphasis again please have make sure that you understand this. So you have the it is not a completely focused condition this could be because of any aberration but this is the smallest distance that is delta not is the least confusion and then and if you look at this delta optimum which is much larger in the image plane. So you may see that you are at the de-focusing condition your image resolution is better is that so it may be the case we will see in the coming slide. So let me read out some few introductory remarks for this aberrations of the electron optical or electromagnetic lens systems the ultimate resolution of the object signal is influenced by mechanical flaws in the lens design which produce imperfect lens field pole piece fabrication and also by mutual repulsion of electrons at constricted points that is a focal points lens apertures etc along the optical axis particularly the focal points. The variation in the electron energy at various points in the beam give rise to image distortion and contribute generally to loss of contrast and sharpness. So this is the fundamental point which you have to keep in mind whatever happens in the electromagnetic lens system it is the variation in the electron energy at various points in a beam give rise to image distortion and causes the loss of contrast and sharpness. The lens aberrations primarily responsible for deviations in electron ray intersections and concomitant loss in image clarity may be classified as geometrical aberrations chromatic aberrations and field effect aberrations including a space charge of the electrons. We will see one by one and the space charge of electrons we did not discuss in the light optical system we will see in this system how it is affecting the resolution. So it is just a recap of what we have seen the type of aberrations the this the schematic I have just put it everything in one image because we have already seen them in much more detail and when we discussed in the light optical systems. So the first schematic shows the coma effect and the second schematic describes the curvature of field and third schematic C is astigmatism and the fourth one is lens distortion and the fifth one is spherical aberration I will not describe them in detail because you have already seen it if you have a doubt you can go back to that lecture and then look at all this individual defects and then make yourself clear about this and it is the same thing I will only discuss about how these defects are taken care in this electron optical system in terms of coma it can be eliminated almost entirely in an electromagnetic lens by the establishment of field conditions giving rise to unity magnification and in terms of curvature field it is reduced by properly shaping the electromagnetic lens field the astigmatism on the other hand is correctable by inserting stigmators in the appropriate lens system to compensate the non-circularity of the image beam profile on the image plane. So what is stigmator the stigmator containing symmetrical arrangements of tiny ferro magnets are suitable permanently magnetized components acts to circularize the image and the lens distortion the correction of coma in an electromagnetic lens and currently eliminates the lens distortions as well. So what you should appreciate here is in electro optical systems the most of your aberrations is controlled by the field strength and the field distribution in an optical system we just all these aberrations were compensated with the an additional glass lens here since all the your focal length everything is controlled by the field strength and your aberrations also controlled by the appropriate field strength and its distribution in the appropriate lens system. So we will see the other aberrations spherical aberrations the correction of the spherical aberrations rest in the design of lens lenses with special field distributions for allowing smaller aperture angles to be attained with the simultaneous reduction in CS possibly by a design aperture aimed at producing less symmetrical lens fields. So as I mentioned this particular aberration is very important and how much we can reduce this will finally determine the resolution of the optical system and then we will see them and its numerical significance in a few minutes and chromatic aberration which is caused by the fluctuations occurring in the lens coils becomes simply a problem of electronic regulation as do fluctuations in the cathode and anode potentials to this extent this defect is correctable. However the energy losses resulting from the inelastic scattering in the object cannot be dealt with to the same extent and it is overcome by operation the system at higher voltages. The another important aspect of this electron optical system is a space charge effect what is this space charge effect at the focal points along the electron optic axis the concentration of electrons into small volumes produces a strong mutual repulsive action and a concomitant tendency of the beam to spread from the point of constriction that is from the point of focus this produces an effective reduction in the associated accelerating potential of the electrons and they lose velocity and this problem is somewhat less at very high voltage and where lower beam currents are employed with an associated low beam intensity. So this particular effect is specially belong to this electron optical system and you have to remember the aberrations which we talk about and its effect on resolution we simply assume that or we simply do not consider the specimen condition. For example whatever the aberration we talk about we assume that the specimen is pure and it does not have any contaminating I mean constituents in it or it does not react with the beam and then produce its own new product that will impair the resolution. So all this the treatment which we are talking about or the compensating effect we talk about assuming that the specimen is in the ideal condition. So in the mathematical treatment which we are going to look at is also in this similar manner that we are not taking the specimen effect that means we assume that specimen is ideally prepared and it does not have any contamination or any other reacting constituents with the electron beam. So now we will just take up this two spherical I mean two aberrations first we will talk about spherical aberration so what I am trying to write here is the image forming lens or the critical beam forming lens in an electron microscope or micro probe system in the objective lens we always talk about objective lens whether it could be a any image forming lens or it could be an electron forming lens I mean you know electron microscope critical beam forming lens or it could be electron micro probe analyzer we always concerned about the aberrations of objective lens we can describe the disc of confusion caused by the spherical aberration as that is delta SP delta not as general notation for disc of confusion here delta SP is it is exclusively caused by the spherical aberration can be represented as two times CS alpha cube where CS the spherical aberration coefficient which is also given by gamma naught CS equal to gamma naught times B naught divided by Ni whole square bracket square. So this expression you are familiar with already this is potential this is number of coil this is current which is which is observed to be proportional to the square of the focal length so this can be written as CS equal to gamma naught focal length of objective lengths and its potential divided by Ni whole square where gamma is a constant ranging from 100 for strong lens and 150 for weak lens gamma is a constant ranging from 100 for a strong lens 150 for weak lens so similarly we will see this chromatic aberration as we discussed earlier it depends on electron energy loss lens current fluctuation delta I is expressed as delta chromatic disc of confusion created by chromatic aberration can be related to 2 times chromatic CC alpha delta CR equal to 2 times CC that is chromatic aberration coefficient alpha times delta V by V naught whole square plus delta I by I whole square 2 power half that is square root of the whole expression we write where CC chromatic aberration coefficient which is also given by CC equals gamma naught prime focal length of objective where gamma naught prime is a constant varying from 0.5 to lens action so you have this chromatic aberration constant is equal to gamma naught prime times focal length of objective and gamma naught prime is the constant varying from 0.5 to 1 for a strong or weak lens action respectively so now what we will do is we will see that how all this aberrations we will now try to write some expressions for object resolution and then image quality involving all this aberrations which we talk about so we see that so what I have written as a consequence of the uncertainty principle the exact image displacement of electrons diffracted from the object area will be subjected to uncertainty of discrete line displacement in the object of the order delta X which is equal to L L that is list of based conclusion line to line which can be written as lambda divided by 2 sin alpha you are familiar with this expression and it can be assumed like this so I read out again because of the uncertainty principle the electrons diffracted from the object area will be subject to uncertainty of discrete line displacements in the object so if alpha is 0.01 to 0.001 gradient then we can write delta L L is 0.5 lambda divided by alpha for example you can write in a typical electron microscope alpha is 0.003 at 100 kV your delta L L could be roughly about 7 angstrom this could give you an idea a typical case where you see that delta L how to appreciate this so now we will include the lens aberrations and see how this expression is modified where so what I have done is where the lens aberration included in the real electron optical system the ultimate resolution is given by considering in addition to the diffraction uncertainty chromatic and spherical aberrations the combination of the error disc radiate that is delta optimum in the image plane is found from delta optimum equal to square root of delta L L square plus delta sp by 2 whole square plus delta chromatic divided by 2 square we consider limit of two points see we always talk about point resolution as well as line resolution you can consider these two if you consider two points in the image plane optimum in the resolution limit delta pp that is point to point disc of conclusion this also you are familiar with where again include so if you include this the spherical and chromatic aberration expression into this the point to point disc of this conclusion then you obtain delta optimum point equal to square root of delta pp square plus delta sp by 2 whole square plus delta chromatic divided by 2 whole square so these basic expressions are further modified by several researchers and then we can write one more general expression for disc of least confusion I will we will talk about all this much more detail how this is really going to affect the practical resolution when we look at the actual microscopic operation but you should appreciate that the importance of this two spherical and chromatic aberrations of it really influence the resolution limit of the optical system so what before we just look at this expression if you recall this the ray diagram which I showed in the beginning of this class where you see that delta naught was defined as disc of least confusion in a deep focus plane and then if you look at the image plane where delta optimal when on the image plane which is much larger than the D naught delta optimum was much larger than in the array disc we describe which is larger than the D naught so that clearly implies that if you reduce the field strength then you will automatically get the better resolution so to emphasis this point these to get an expression for delta naught itself that is what we are trying to show here the minimum constriction of the beam described as the disc of least confusion on the deep focus plane on the optical axis the diameter of the disc of least confusion is given by delta naught equal to square root of four times delta p p square plus c s alpha cube divided by two whole square plus c c alpha delta v by v naught whole square where delta p p is equal to 0.61 times lambda by alpha and where c s and c c are the spherical and chromatic aberration proficiency delta v is voltage change for a acceleration potential v naught and alpha is an objective aperture angle so in this class I hope you have at least have some basic idea about how this aberrations in an electron optical system is considered and its influence on the resolution of the image and the microscope so now we will now move on to the actual electron optical system especially we will start with a scanning work on microscopy and its working principle and its application from the next class thank you


Good morning and welcome to the ninth meeting in 2016 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. I remind everyone to switch off mobile devices as they may interfere with the broadcasting. Our first item today is for the committee to agree to take agenda item 3 in private. I would ask members if they agree to that this morning. Thank you very much. Agenda item 2 today is the Commissioner for Ethical Standards and Public Life in Scotland and his annual report. Joining us at committee today are Bill Thomson, the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland, Ian Bruce, Public Appointments Manager and Ruth Hogg, Investigation Manager for the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland and a very warm welcome to you all to committee this morning. I invite Mr Thomson to make an opening statement. Thank you, convener. I am grateful for the opportunity to address you on the annual report and to answer questions that you may have on it, and for that matter, on some of the updated material, which I hope you now have before you. You will have noted in the briefing paper that my remit covers the investigation of a range of complaints. This consumes roughly two thirds of the resources of my office, and the balance is applied to the public appointments remit on which there is actually a very good story to tell. I will start with the complaints side. The vast bulk of the complaints workload involves complaints against councillors and a few complaints, albeit a growing number of complaints against members of public bodies. Complaints about the conduct of MSPs are relatively infrequent, and even though the number received in the year covered by the report represented a significant percentage increase on previous years, most of those actually fell outside my remit. They were excluded complaints or simply inept, and therefore they were inadmissible. Just for your benefit, the average number of complaints about MSPs since 2004-05 is very near, and the 24 is 23. Something. Last year may have been a little bit of a blip in terms of numbers. Those numbers, of course, are set out on table 11, which is on page 11 of the annual report, and table 13, which is on the next page, page 12, shows how they were dealt with. If, convener, the committee is interested, I would be very happy to go into more detail of how those were dealt with. In the interests of brevity, I will skip over that detail at the moment. During the year, I will point out that three complaints led to reports being submitted to your predecessor committee, and one complaint was still under investigation at the point where the Parliament was dissolved. In the first six months of the current year, the number of complaints about MSP conduct that we received was 11. If that pattern were to continue—obviously, I have no idea what will happen to it—the total number received by the end of the year would be very near to the average that I have referred to across the past 10 years or so. I did make reference to there being a good story to tell in relation to public appointments, and very briefly, I think that there are two parts to that. The first part is a significantly improved working relationship between my office, including the public appointments advisers, and the staff of the Scottish Government who are involved in the arrangement in the management and in advising on public appointments. We have, in effect, a partnership approach, which included, among other activities, Ian Bruce on my right, participating in a group set up to take forward a range of projects designed to promote and co-ordinate efforts to improve diversity on public boards. I am pleased to report a measure of success in taking forward these co-ordinated initiatives. The combined impact, I would suggest, has been a marked improvement in the representation of several of the underrepresented groups on public boards to which appointments are made by Scottish ministers. I would also like to emphasise that the appointment of people from underrepresented groups in society, which is a good thing, is only one part of diversity. The other is not limited to the protected characteristics set out in the Equalities Acts. That aspect is important. It is diversity of thought and outlook, based on skills, experience, knowledge and other relevant attributes of the individuals who present themselves. I would also like to draw attention to the fact that this is really important. The appointment of board members must be made on merit. That is what determines who is put forward for appointment. In my opinion, there is no room for tokenism. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and you will find that in table 25, which is on page 21 of the annual report, that shows the demographic profile of board membership at the end of 2015. Table 26, which is on the following page of the annual report, shows how that has changed over the period from 2004 to 2005. I have also, I hope, made available to you an update to table 25, bringing it almost bang up to date. That is showing continuing improvements in respect of some, but admittedly not all, of the target groups. I would just like to finish by referring to the strategic plan for the office for 2016-2020, which was published at the beginning of this financial year. I have two strategic objectives, one for each side of the work. The first is an accessible complaints process with trusted outcomes. The other is public boards, which are effective and reflective of society. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Mr Thomson. I am going to open the session now to members who have any questions and invite Clare Hockey to open the proceedings. Thank you, convener, and thank you to the panel for coming along this morning. That was really interesting. Your opening statement was really interesting, because it leads me very nicely into the question that I was going to ask you, which is about, as you are saying, two-thirds of your resources are used to investigate complaints, and yet we see from the report that a lot of those complaints are not progressed. Could you perhaps explain to the committee why those complaints have not been progressed, but perhaps what work the commission has done in publicising what they do so that they are not in receipt of complaints that are not appropriate for you to be investigating and therefore using up your resources? I would like to draw a distinction between complaints about the conduct of MSPs and the other complaints with which we deal. First of all, we are dealing with MSP complaints in your remit. I think that the MSP code is quite a lengthy document, and I am not sure how many people who might be minded to make a complaint can reasonably be expected to understand it inside out. In fact, it is clear that some MSPs do not understand parts of it because of the complaints that I receive. I can say that with some certainty. I do not mean that as a criticism, but I just think that it is quite a heavy tome, and some aspects of it are quite difficult to find. I do not think that it is all that surprising that some of the complaints that I get about MSPs are not actually complaints that I can follow because the excluded complaints are set out in section 9 of volume 2 of the code, and you have to be fairly determined if you started at the beginning to read that far. If you were looking at the index, I am not sure that it would jump out at you. My suggestion is that it is perfectly understandable that people who have an issue about the conduct of an MSP send it into the commission for ethical standards, but the majority of the complaints that I get are outside my remit. Some are outside the remit of anybody dealing with complaints. As you will see, some go to the First Minister because there are complaints about a member's conduct as a minister, and that is quite a difficult distinction for some people to make. Some go to the Presiding Officer because there are complaints about conduct in the Parliament. Usually, there are complaints about what is now section 8 of volume 2, which is liaison with an engagement with constituents. Understandably, that causes some people to feel the need to complain. Some are simply not competent at all. There have been complaints that—I am not mentioning names—a presiding officer failed to stop a First Minister making a certain statement in response to a question at FMQs. That just is not capable of being investigated as a complaint. If you are interested in my observations on the other sorts of complaints about cancillers, which are, as I say, the vast bulk of the complaints, we have a position where the volume of complaints relating to the key principles and the key principles alone was quite significant. It was over a fifth of the complaints that were received. Those cannot go forward unless there is something else to do with the detailed rules. The code says that. It is like the MSP code in that respect. It says that the key principles are there for guidance alone. However, I do not think that that is—I do not know how to make that obvious to people. It is on my website. It is in the complaints leaflet that we issue to people about how we investigate and what we can investigate. However, I think that if somebody is really annoyed about what they see as dishonesty, self-serving, failure to be accountable, failure to be open or whatever it is, it is very tempting to put the complaint in under the key principles. It shows that they have actually paid attention to the code, which is good in itself. However, it is not reasonable to expect them to have a full grasp of all the detailed rules. We make contact with people when a complaint comes in to establish whether there is any more to it. I am glad to say that the volume of complaints relating only to key principles has gone on a downward trend. The other reason why we do not pursue things is because there is not a shred of evidence in some cases. It is reasonable to say that some people read a newspaper report about what a politician may have said, and they are incensed about it, so they write in and make a complaint. Sometimes the newspaper report—you will find that it is strange—is not accurate, and I cannot then find the so-called statement to which the complaint relates, so I cannot investigate. We do search on social media at times for things that are allegedly said. We sometimes find them quite interesting. Other times they do not exist or they were not said by the person. They cannot be shown to be said by the person who has complained about it. I am sorry, that is a very lengthy answer, but there are a lot of reasons. I hope that that helps. That does help. You raised an interesting point there about the MSP's code of conduct. Do you have an opinion on whether that should be revised, simplified? I am going to try and dug that one, convener. I suspect that I will not get away with it. If it could be simplified, that would be a good thing. As it happens, I have just somewhat diffidently submitted comments to the parliamentary commissioner for standards at Westminster, who is revising the MSP's code of conduct. I am not suggesting that it is a model far from it, but I simply observe that it is drafted in a completely different way. The code itself is very short at three or four pages. The trouble is that there are then rules that relate to it and then there are the house rules and there are various other things. One of the questions that I have put to the commissioner there is, what is the hierarchy? How do you work out which of those takes priority? So whichever way you do it, there are difficulties. It is very hard to find your way through aspects of the MSP code. I have been working with it on and off for about 16 years now. Do you, commissioner, to know that the clerks of the committee are actually looking at the code and not with a review of the content, but a review of the accessibility about it and how we can move that forward? Mr Barvey wanted to come in. Thanks very much just to follow up on those questions. Given that you have to look at the outpouring of some social media, I think that we can all just be grateful that your remit does not cover Mr Trump. Hopefully, nobody in Scotland is giving you challenges of that nature. I was wondering whether there has ever been any sense that there is a correlation between the complaints that come in and the political cycle, either in terms of complaints being directed at incumbents during an election campaign or complaints about new politicians, newly elected politicians, once they are in office? Some of that might be about political motivation for complaints rather than legitimate complaints, so those might be the kind that get dismissed. Has there been a correlation? Does that impact on your workload, the political cycle and any connection there? I do wonder about that, convener, but I do not have a straightforward answer. In part because, during my period of office, which is two and a half years, there has not been a quiet time politically. There has always been something major going on, and of course, there are more to come. I would suggest that, rather than being to do with the big events such as elections, a referendum or a major campaign, it is more to do with what I think is probably best described as breakdown in relations. These are sometimes relations between political parties or people representing political parties on, in my case, largely local authorities. In some cases, there are breakdowns within the groups themselves. In other cases, I am talking about councillors, there are independents who, in some cases, are really independent and therefore not very easy to handle, if I can put it that way, and not subject to any party political discipline. In other cases, they may have been in one or other political parties and have left for whatever reason, and that, obviously, can lead to continuing conflict. Some complaints are very clearly political. It does not mean that they are inept or that they should not be investigated. If there is a foundation, in fact, then, obviously, they can be a legitimate complaint. If all of the political complaints were taken out of my sphere of activity, I doubt if it would remove more than a third of the total number. It does not have an impact on your workload in terms of the political cycle of your planning for knowing that this is going to be a busy year because there are big events coming up. It is not a connection to that level. I live in hope that I will not have a busy year, but that has not materialised so far. Thank you. Can I bring Mr Johnson in? A clear-hawnging's question looked at why some complaints do not proceed. The flip side of that question is a little bit about what competent complaints are untapped. You mentioned accessibility in your opening statement. What steps are you taking to improve your accessibility? Do you have a sense of the size of your untapped market, if you forgive the business speak? The honest answer is that I do not have a scoopy, frankly, about the size of the untapped market. I would like to think that it is quite small. It takes quite a lot of effort for people to make a serious complaint. The odd one who reads the newspaper is incensed and sends in a quick note. I am not counting, but those who go to the trouble, as a lot of them do, setting out what the circumstances are and why they are upset about them, that takes quite a lot of effort. You have asked two questions effectively. In terms of accessibility, we keep trying to improve the form in which people at the moment have to complete. We are moving to a point where that will be able to be completed online. That will make it more accessible for some people. It will make it more accessible for everybody. We have improved the way that we deal with the complaints when they come in. As I said earlier, if they are not well expressed, they are only relating to key principles, and therefore do not look as though they amount to anything. We go back to people and do not help them to put their complaint in, but we ask questions to prompt information that would allow us to proceed. I have, in human terms, an understandable reluctance to open the doors very wide, in the simple sense that I do not currently have the resources to deal properly with the volume of complaints that we receive—not within the budget, that is not possible. The remit is about to be extended. There are some details in relation to MSPs and registration of certain interests. I do not think that that will cause a major flood, although some of the areas that could lead us into could be quite contentious in terms of election expenses. The other imminent extension is in relation to lobbying. I have suggested recently to the newly appointed registrar that consideration should be given to the approach that was taken in Ireland where they introduced the system, but not the penalties immediately. In other words, there was a sort of running-in period. I think that that would allow people to become familiar with it. I think that it would allow honest mistakes to be picked up, and it should reduce the risk of complaints that should be dealt with by my other means. To what extent would you say that it is difficult for someone who might struggle to articulate themselves in writing or, indeed, use online forms of communication? How easy is it for someone in those circumstances to make a complaint? Without help, it is impossible. That is the position. It is clear that some of the complaints that we receive have not come directly from the person who has complained. That does not matter, provided that they have put their name to it. However, as the law stands, they do have to be in writing. I think that there is a risk that that excludes some people. I think that there is an even bigger risk, if they did not have to be in writing, that people would just pick up the phone or send a text or whatever it was. We would be inundated with Snash, frankly. Thank you. Mr Anderson, you wanted to come in on a supplementary. Thank you, convener. I have the… Sorry, don't mind. I added to many things, convener. I knew you meant me. You talk about the potential complexities of the code of conduct. Do those complexities give any flavour to the whole idea of how effective and how efficient and how fair the whole process is that you have to manage going forward? Or does that not feature within the process? The complexities are handled, in my experience, or so it would appear, very effectively by… I am not trying to embarrass anybody or the clerks to the committee over the years who have given advice to members who have had quite difficult things to be advised on. I suppose that the primary responsibility lies with them and with you and other members yourselves. The complexity can make it difficult for me intellectually in sorting out whether there is a valid complaint or whether the circumstances disclose behaviour. That is not, to me, a breach. I do not have a complaint about that. I think that it is reasonable in my post that I am prepared to tackle whatever comes up in that respect. There is a dilemma. Arguably, all the rules would be clearly set out in the code, but if you tried to cover every possible situation, you would have a code that is even longer than the one that exists, and that would be counterproductive. I apologise, Mr Stewart. You mentioned in your opening statement about the degree of success that you have had, particularly in women's representation on boards, which is to welcome to everyone here today. I wonder whether you are able to share any particular measures that you have taken that you feel have led to both increasing applications from females and the success of their appointments to boards? Yes, convener. I will pass to Ian Bruce once he is ready to speak. However, before he does, credit must be given where it is due. It is the minister to make the appointment, so this is not a political statement. It is the Government who has responded to suggestions, advice and taken their own initiatives. The political climate has put diversity up there, which is a good thing, and that has impacted on attitudes across the board. There is also a clear openness to work with my office and the advisers who are contracted to the office to support public appointments in trying out new approaches. I would like to hand over to Ian just to give him a flavour of things that seem to be working. Good morning, convener. Members, thanks again for the opportunity to give evidence. It is always a privilege. I thought today because we over the piece have given an indication of the broad steps that have to be taken in combination because there is no magic bullet to achieve diversity, but the broad steps that have to be taken in order to achieve more diverse boards. Today, in preference, I thought I might give some illustrative examples of specific appointment rounds where diversity has been achieved, just to give you an indication of how those things work in practice. In terms of gender diversity and looking to achieve gender balance, the example that I would like to draw on is for Visit Scotland. There, you had a board with nine members, one of whom was a woman. Obviously, they had to seek to redress under representation, but they are working in a context in which the nature of the visitor economy in Scotland has changed significantly. You have, as I referred to previously, two targets to meet. You need to redress under representation by gender. At the same time, you have specific new skillsets that the board would benefit from in order to meet the challenges that it currently faces. The first thing is engagement with the appointing minister. What are your priorities for Visit Scotland over the next three to four years, which is the typical term of appointment for new members? The minister gives you a clear steer on the different types of skills that they are looking for in order for the board to be successful. On that basis, that information is provided to the panel and they then understand that we need to design a competition. Basically, we are running four competitions in tandem to find four different types of people who are going to meet the needs of the board. At the same time, you need to then take positive action, so we know that we have under representation by gender. Which groups do we now have to connect with in order to encourage applications from people who have those skills and who happen to be women? That means contact with bodies with whom we are already working, the likes of changing the chemistry, women on boards, the institute of directors. You have an open event and you actively encourage people from those organisations to have these skills to come forward. It is not exclusively for women but they are encouraged to come forward. You design your competition, you ensure that the material that you are using is welcoming. One of the things that we have introduced over the course of the last year is our advisers. Now advise panels on bias mitigation techniques that they can use and that even extends to the type of language. Believe it or not, certain terms and phrases are more attractive to men than the arts of women, more off-putting to women than men. You adapt the materials in order to ensure that they are attractive to everyone. You design a simple assessment process, you do not ask for too much, you do not set out a whole long list of criteria for selection because we understand on the basis of behavioural science that that may be advantageous to men.  That is what happened in this case. There were five appointments made, they met the needs of the boards. Four out of those five appointments happened to be women because of the additional effort that was put in. That is fairly typical of the sort of activity that is now going on. Obviously it has to be bespoke in relation to each underrepresented group and it entirely goes back to what is this board needs at this point in time. That is an example of the sort of work that is going on. That is extremely helpful. Thank you very much. Do you think that Mr Arthur wanted to come in at this point? Yes, I sat actually on that very point. Reference is made on a page 56 to taking steps, I suppose further steps, which we have already built upon, particularly increasing more numbers from the under-50s, and we will also declare this as LGBT. I wonder if you could perhaps expand upon what steps you will be taking going forward. Absolutely. In relation to disability, which is clearly an issue for us, in fairness to the Government they did conduct a data cleanse, so we believe that the quality of the information that they now have on the current cohort of board members is more accurate than it used to be, but we did identify that there was a significant issue there. They already commissioned Inclusion Scotland to take an overview of all of the public appointments activity that is going on. That in itself has led to the production of a draft report. The commissioner mentioned our advisers earlier. It is a bit of a brain trust, so although they are all expert in recruitment and selection, some of them have particular specialisms. We have assigned one of our advisers, who is an expert in redressing underrepresentation by disability, to work with the Government on rolling out that action plan to ensure that we are redressing underrepresentation by disability. LGP is slightly trickier. We have an initial meeting set up with SWAN, the LGBT network, for April this year, and we are going to discuss with them the perceived barriers. It is probably worth mentioning at this point that we are going to be doing much more work with public bodies themselves, because much in all we can do things about designing a barrier-free process. The culture of the public body itself has to be welcoming to people, so it is no use just putting a positive action statement in an advert saying, we welcome applications from. If people don't look at the culture of that body and think, well, I could see myself fitting in there, I feel I would be welcomed there, then potentially that's an issue. We are working with public bodies as well. After the session, myself and the commissioner are going along to an induction session for recent appointees. The commissioner will be talking to them about standards, but one of the other things that has been very helpful this year is a breaking down of the barriers within Scottish Government. The public appointments team is also working with the public bodies unit, and that gives us a clear link into public bodies themselves to help them with succession planning, so it is wider than simply appointments. You mentioned younger people. We already have a link with the Scottish Youth Parliament, so we are going to be talking to them largely on an educational basis about the potential for them to consider positions in public life, not necessarily now. We have a seminar lined up with the this is via the national union of students, and that's to do with officers who are assigned to colleges with a view of them, so they have some board experience at that level with a view of them perhaps considering taking on roles. We're also speaking to employers, so the likes of the Royal Bank of Scotland standard life about the possibility of being released because time commitment is an issue, so seeing that as a development opportunity. We have irons and a great many fires. We do understand that we have a lot of work still to do, and we do have another. We did speak about our action plan the last time, another much more detailed action plan because we've ticked a few of the boxes, but we've got many more things to do, and I'm sure we'd be very happy to share that with the committee once that's completed, if that would feel to be helpful. I'm sure my colleagues would be delighted to receive that information, Shreddin. I thank you for that comprehensive answer. Your voice is certainly holding up very well. We're just to turn to a potentially related matter, but the Scottish ministers can approach the commissioner to request that certain provisions of the code can be set of side. Of 40 such requests, 17 were granted. I wonder if the commissioner can explain what types of circumstances led him to agree to those requests. Yes, convener, I can. This is going to sound slightly dry, but this is the detail of it. On five occasions I was asked to agree changes to panel composition. For example, in one case that involved a newly appointed chair becoming involved at an early stage, but not at the very beginning of the process, the code of practice, by the way, requires the panel to be set and to remain so that you don't have three people interviewing five candidates one day and a different group of people interviewing candidates another day, so that there has to be consistency. In a number of cases, the term of appointment of a board member has been extended beyond a normal eight-year maximum. The code of practice sets an eight-year maximum. That's been agreed with ministers and with the Parliament. It was extended on three occasions and two of those were health boards to provide continuity at the time when the integrated joint boards were starting to get up and running. I'm going to say that I haven't agreed to all requests that have come in of that nature, but three were agreed. In four cases, the field was so strong when the appointment round was run that the minister, instead of appointing, said that two people wanted to appoint three because there were such good candidates. That has happened in four cases. On two occasions, I have allowed changes to the application and assessment method. One of those was because of the online system failing at a critical point in the Government's application process. It ended up with people putting in different types of applications at different points. In one case, there was an emergency appointment made much quicker than the normal process because a body chair had to leave unexpectedly early. That obviously can happen. Even body chairs are human. On two other occasions where vacancies occurred unexpectedly, I have agreed that the minister can go back to the list of people who could have been appointed at a recent appointment round but were not appointed and offer the position to one of those people who had already been through the recruitment process and identified as suitable for appointment. I am sorry, that is not wildly interesting, but that is what is the reality of it. I think that it is very useful to capture that and share that information with the committee. I wanted to raise a final point. A strategy that is outlined is public boards that are effective and reflective of society. In the statement commissioner, you stated that diversity of thought, characteristics and outlook are also important and that there is no room for tokenism. In terms of diversity of thought, characteristics and outlook, how can you capture that information? There are ways—I think that Ian Bruce is a slightly more expert on that than I am—it will not always work. I am going to say that there are a number of challenges in increasing diversity of board membership, not least of which is handling it when people are appointed. However, on how they are identified, I will hand over to you. One of the things that has been particularly interesting to me is the fact that ministers have taken the opportunity to look for new things. I mentioned Visit Scotland, but one of the examples that I have used with the people that I am working with in the Scottish Government on some of our outreach activity—I think that is a very good example—is the chair of Support Scotland, who was appointed this year. The minister in that case said that my priority is someone who is passionate about sport, but equally someone who looks to achieve equality and social change through sport. That means that the type of person that you are looking for is very different to what one might have in one's mind as the traditional board member. The person that was ultimately appointed to that role was the co-founder of the big issue in Scotland and the founder of the Homeless World Cup. All you need to do is think about proliferating that for all types of appointments. We are now engaged along with the Government and I feel duty-bound to name-check Evie McLaren and Kirsty Walker as I did the last time from the public appointments team because we are very fortunate to have that continuity. We are working together now in partnership with them and the Public Bodies Unit on a new project to try and capture what is perhaps an ineffable thing. It is very easy to count the numbers—how many women are boards and how many people are disabled—but some of these other characteristics are a bit more ineffable. There is lots of evidence from the private sector that difference makes a difference to board effectiveness—the bottom line. You can look at profit and loss and the public sector—nothing equivalent has been done. We are embarking on a groundbreaking project in Scotland, which is, along with boards themselves, having a look at the difference that difference is making to their governance. What are the different behaviours that are going on boards as a result of the different perspectives that you now have around the table? Is the chair harnessing those perspectives effectively? What difference does that make to the quality of the debate that we are having, whether proposals are being properly scrutinised, whether executives are being better supported because of the range of advice that is available to them? It is a four-year project and we hope to be able to report to the committee in due course about the difference that diversity is making to our boards in relation to those. It is difficult. I look forward to hearing. Thank you very much. I just want to be clear. We are looking at the impact on governance. That is what we are concerned with with the research project. I am sure that those updates would be very welcome. Going forward, Mr Harvey, you wanted to come in. I want to follow up the questions about diversity. On two of the characteristics disability and age, is there any attempt to get beyond a binary understanding of whether somebody is disabled or not disabled or under 50 or over 50? The age one is particularly underrepresented, but if we end up recruiting lots of able-bodied white men in their mid-40s, we have not necessarily had a huge impact on diversity. Similarly with disability, we might see an increase in the number of people who are disabled but without overcoming the barriers that still exist to people whose disability requires a more significant kind of adaptation to enable them to take part. I wonder whether there is scope for more of a kind of spectrum understanding rather than a binary one. Those are very fair points. The figures that we produce are given to us by the Government and Ian McRaffens earlier did not make reference to our data cleanse in terms of disability. The Government is in turn dependent on what board members are prepared to disclose. That means that the question that you have quite properly asked is difficult to give a reassurance on in terms of the statistics because it is dependent on what people are prepared to disclose. Going back to what I said at the beginning in my introductory remarks, we are looking at diversity in its broadest sense, not binary as you put it. I entirely agree that you could either have a board entirely made up of people who apparently have completely different characteristics but all think the same way, or you could have a board of people who all look the same but actually think quite differently. We are now getting into the research project that Ian mentioned, which is our attempt to dig down into that. It is quite a difficult area, but we are optimistic that we will be able to at least get some information to start with. That will open a conversation and encourage people to think differently about the difference. Even on a characteristic that many people understand in binary terms like gender, how do we take account at the moment of people with a non-binary gender identity? Is that recorded at all? I think that the short answer to that is no. That is perhaps another interesting one to think about for the future. I want to ask a few questions about your budget. The biggest portion of your £853,000 budget is staff, so I want to ask a few questions about staff, composition and so on. I would like to start with your workload first and foremost. Last year we received 245 complaints that formed 132 cases, which was up from last year but down from two years ago. Would it be fair to say that your workload is relatively consistent? Is it trending around a stable mean? Yes. In terms of numbers, yes it is. However, there are problems if the assessment is made purely on the numbers. There is very significant variation between the complexity involved in complaints. Some of them probably only consume several hundred pounds of resource within my office. Others may consume tens of thousands of pounds worth of resource. There is a trend at the moment. Although the numbers are absolutely right in statistical terms, you could find a mean. It is around 130 cases a year. There are significant variations from one year to another, but it does come back roughly to that mean. As I mentioned, the number of MSP complaints over the years is roughly 24, 30 last year, which is statistically a big shift, but it is actually not a big number. However, the complexity seems to be going up, and that is in part down to—this is a question of being a victim of your own success—reducing the number of complaints that, if you like, are easily dismissed because they are not properly formed or not competent. Therefore, those that are left have a larger percentage that has to be gone into it in more detail. In part, it is down to a tendency in some cases to involve for those against whom complaints are made to involve representatives—usually legal representatives—and I am a lawyer, by the way, but lawyers complicate things, but that is true. It is the way that it happens. I think that, particularly among some of the politically-motivated complaints, there is a growing tendency for people to want to throw as much into it as possible. We are not unusual as a complaints body in this respect, but we get hundreds of pages of stuff from people sometimes. No matter how hard I try to ask them to tell me which bits are relevant, it does not always work. Then you have people who find something else three weeks later, and then you are just about ready to finish it three months later if something else comes in, and they are determined that they are going to get whoever this is—or make you get them, in my case, me. The further complication is that, after I have made a decision, if it goes as a report to the standards commission, they almost always hold a hearing that, with an MSP complaint, comes to this committee. At the hearing, I present my findings, or I am represented by one of the people in the office. If there is no breach in my opinion, then there is no right of appeal, but quite a number of people do not accept that. Because of freedom of information, which, in principle, I support, I think is a good thing, they can ask for a great deal now. If there have been hundreds of pages of documents looked at, they can ask for a lot of information, and then they can come back with almost endless comments on little bits here and there. That consumes, possibly, wastes quite a lot of resource. So, in the last year, you have employed two new members of staff. Is that correct? Two new investigating officers, yes, on a part. I am sorry. Three new investigating officers? Three new investigating officers, and your total staff is 17, is that correct? Yes. So, what has been the driver to increase? I note that that has driven your median salary cost from £39,000 to £47,000 a year. The three new investigating officers were, if you like, replacements for two who had retired and one extra. They have actually been employed at a lower salary scale than those who were employed before, because those who were employed before have protected terms and conditions from previous iterations of the office, which I now hold. This is the third version of it in about as many years. There were two separate commissioners, then there was a commission, and now there is one commissioner. So, there have been complications there. We are also, in the course of this year, preparing to tender for a complaints management system. Although we have one, it is very old and it was developed by a member of staff in the office, and it is in danger of falling over because it is not supported on the platform in which it was developed many years ago. That has put quite a lot of strain. 17 sounds like a large number of people, but it is not, because a lot of them work part-time. The investigating officers are home-based, with one exception. They are not actually in the office at all, so we have one, if you like, supernumerary member of staff to ease the administrative burden throughout the year. The other fact is that staff salaries, which follow the corporate body's scales, have gone up by small percentages year on year.  Some of that is down to the amount of time that is spent on investigations, and I cannot readily control that. Just coming back to the workload point, you are dealing with about two to three full investigations on average per month, with a total of 245 complaints. Per staff member, what is it? One or two full investigations a month dealing with two or three complaints? No. In practice, investigating officers are generally implied one and a half day a week. I am afraid to skew your calculations. The number of current investigations that each investigating officer is dealing with varies during the year. At one point, it was averaging at 10 each. It is currently down at between four and five, I think, on average. It is not easy to appreciate where you are coming from. I am not trying to be difficult, but it is just not as simple as that, I am afraid. No, but at the same time, I am just trying to understand your staff costs, because it is that the fundamental is the biggest line item on your P&L. Yes, all this will be. If I am just drawing the very crude comparison, as an MSP's office, we get around £80,000 to spend on our staff. In terms of the total number of constituent contacts, it would be several times the 245 figure and indeed the number of cases correspondingly high. On our median staff costs in an MSP's office, it would be around £25,000 to £30,000. I am just trying to get an understanding of why you need to employ people on a considerably higher salary to do what I think in terms of dealing with complainants and so on, ostensibly not substantially different type of work. I am just trying to understand what the driver for that high-salary median salary is. I think that it would be a good idea to have a bit more information about the comparison that you are drawing between the sort of work done in any of your constituency offices and the sort of work done by an investigating officer. So, your highest paid member of staff has been paid more than an MSP though, is that correct? Sort of £62,000 a year? That is a protected salary scale for somebody who works not a full week, but yes, if that individual were employed full-time, yes, they would be paid more than an MSP. So, is it the preparation of the reports then that is taking the work? I am just trying to, because in terms of pure volumes, I do not think it is necessarily about the volume of communication or is it... I mean, what... I am just trying to understand what the driver of the work is and the requirement for the higher salary. Well, we have talked this morning about the complexity of the codes and my office deals with a very large number of codes because there is the MSP code, there is the councillor's code and then there are the individual public bodies codes. They are not all in the same terms. There is complexity in the issues, I think, Mr Stewart asked me about this, which the investigating officers who are the highest paid staff have to be able to assess. They are involved in gathering information, which sounds simple, but it is not. They are assessing sometimes complex information, sometimes apparently simple information. They are interviewing people who may have a reason not simply to come out with all of the information that I need. Some of those people are in positions of authority where they are not used to being challenged. Writing up the results of investigation is actually quite demanding exercise. I would be very surprised if many of your constituency staff would be expected—I am not saying that they would not be capable, but I would be very surprised if they were expected to write the same sort of reports. They are my reports, I have to say, because I am answerable for everything that is in them. I do not just sign them off, it is not like that at all. I do question them, discuss them and change them. I am not sure whether that gives you the answer. It is the best that I can do off the top of my head. The cost of an investigation varies, depending on the complexity of that investigation. What I see from the report is that the majority of your investigations are relatively low-cost. At what stage would you stop an investigation or would you stop an investigation if it was continuing to move in a direction that was incurring more and more costs for the organisation? At the moment, I have no authority to put a cost limit. I do have discretion as to whether or not I investigate and how I investigate. However, I am governed by administrative law, which means that my decisions have to be, in simple terms, reasonable. I think that if I had started an investigation, particularly if it looked as though it was going to uncover evidence of a breach, I would then stop it because we had already spent up to the limit. That is not what you are putting to me. I appreciate that. However, I am trying to think how we would be able to manage cost increases in a way that was competent. I have not got an answer to that. I appreciate the point that you are making. I think about it quite a lot. I have endeavoured to come up with ways of limiting the range of investigations that we conduct. I am afraid that I did not get my response when I tried that. It is tricky. At what point do you decide that this is not important? It is important to the person who has put it in. If there is no evidence, I will stop it. I then spend, in some cases, two years or longer toing and froing with the person who thinks that I should have spoken to so-and-so whoever I heard, such-and-such or whatever. That then racks up costs that I cannot properly allocate against a current investigation. That is part of the reason for the cost, I am afraid. I do stop things, but there are consequences. If the complainant does not like the answer that you give, that can continue that whole process. We are always trying to improve. I think that it is only fair that I answer people's questions. If they are not clear about what I have decided or why I have decided it, I think that it is only fair that I try to explain that. It becomes difficult if we have been doing that for months and the questioning is still going on. We do have a policy on vexatious complainants, but it is very difficult in a public post simply to stop communicating with somebody, particularly if they are clever enough to come back with a different question—which, of course, people are. Cymru, you mentioned a couple of pieces of legislation that are likely to be of interest to the committee. That is the Lobbings Scotland Act 2016 and the interests of members of the Scottish Parliament Act 2016. Can you give us any indication of how those acts might impact on your workload, the working practices and the resource constraints that you have spoken about? I am not expecting the changes to members' interests legislation to throw up much in the way of additional work for the office, but anything that does come through could be quite difficult because of the complexities that we should be aware of in terms of the way the legislation has had to be framed. I have given evidence in the past to the effect that I am assuming that there will be very few complaints that I have to investigate. That assumption is founded on hope rather than evidence—I do not have any evidence, obviously. It is one reason why I have suggested today and previously that serious thought should be given to introducing the whole regime in stages, giving it time to bed in before it kicks off in anger with complaints. There are criminal offences here, which I think that people could stumble into quite innocently through lack of appreciation. There will, of course, be education and information. People are busy and they do not always pick that up, I am afraid, or they may not realise. I thank you for your contributions today and your colleagues. On that note, we will move into private session.


Hi, welcome to the Daily Decrypt. Your currency competition is ready, little Billy. I'm your host, Amanda, and today's episode is brought to you by BitShares. Today I've spoken with Roger Veer, the one and only Bitcoin Jesus. He's in Acapulco getting ready to make a presentation at Anarcapulco, and so he doesn't have a lightning fast connection speed, but his point comes through loud and clear. So I have with me the Bitcoin Jesus. And before we get into today's topic, which is very related to one being a symbol of peace, Roger Veer, tell us why you are called Bitcoin Jesus. I didn't really choose that nickname for myself, but when I first heard about Bitcoin, I realized what a wonderful, powerful tool it is to improve the lives of people all over the planet, and I did my absolute best to tell as many people about it and set them up with Bitcoin wallets and explain to them why this is going to improve the lives of everybody on the planet, and somehow along the way of telling as many people as I could get to listen about Bitcoin, people started calling me Bitcoin Jesus, I guess, but anyhow, here we are today, more than five years later, and Bitcoin is really entering mainstream consciousness. Microsoft, IBM, Dell, computer, anyone and everyone in the tech space is well aware of Bitcoin at this point.  And like fast forward all these years later, they now have like $2,000 worth of Bitcoin in Cassatius coins from you buying a cup of coffee from them. So I know that they probably appreciated that very much your evangelism. Yeah, I remember that was a, I think a lot of people don't realize just what an important role libertarians in general and then free state project members have played in the spreading of Bitcoin. I remember when I went to that pork fest, I believe it was the summer of 2012 and I brought maybe a thousand of the physical Cassatius Bitcoins with me and I did my absolute best to spend them. And at the time it was like $3,000 worth of Bitcoins or whatever. And I spent them all over the campground and by the end of the week, everybody at the campground I think had some. And if they didn't, because the internet was a little bit spotty out there. So the physical Bitcoins worked really well and that was the case, but it was a fun time. I think for those who know, Mandaric with his famous baklava and bacon weaves, I think he made the most Bitcoin that week because I paid him quite a few because he had great food and other people were as well. Well, that is such a good story. Well, let me move into why I've called you today. So I saw yesterday that you had tweeted an article that was written by Washington Sanchez who is a developer at Open Bazaar. And he wrote a post on Medium that I believe, you know, I'm just going to let you tell us the title and the sentiment. What is this article that I'm asking you about? Yeah, it was about a week ago. And I think from what I recall it was basically just saying, hey, let's all get along and let's collaborate and imagine how much more we can get done if we all work together. And I think that's the right sentiment, even if it's not necessarily always possible in reality. But, you know, as a group, we can get more done as individuals, but certainly don't force, of course, others to be part of your group if they're not interested in being part of your group. But I read his post there. I liked the sentiment. I tweeted it back out because I thought it was at the very least the right attitude, even if it's not necessarily possible in every instance or circumstance. Yeah, so what he had said was, OK, so on the core side, most of us agree that segregated witness is an awesome idea. And on the classic side, most of us agree that two megabyte blocks is also an awesome idea. And so he was saying, well, since increasing the block size requires a fork anyway, which I did not even know. But he said, since that requires a fork anyway, why don't we all basically just fork together and incorporate both of our good ideas? And so as you just insinuated, there is maybe a high or a low likelihood of that happening. What do you think is the likelihood of that happening? I think it's a fantastic idea, and I hope that happens. And I think just about everybody that's on the side of raising the block size, they like segregated witness, too, the vast majority of them. So I don't think there would be a contentious fork if the people on the Bitcoin core side would say, OK, we're going to do segregated witness and increase the block size at the same time. And there's plenty of quotes from people on that side previously saying that they wanted to increase the block size. And then as soon as they came up with the idea of segregated witness, they didn't seem to be as interested in increasing the actual block size at the same way anymore. And the part that's so frustrating for me, my career was in tech. Before Bitcoin, I sold computer memory. I started a company called memorydealers.com. I remember when I started this, I was selling eight megabyte memory modules, not eight gigabyte, not eight terabyte, eight megabyte memory modules, and they were $650 each. Today, those same eight megabyte modules are absolute garbage. You have to pay someone to take them away and throw them away. And today, people are worried, oh, how could blocks ever be 100 megabytes or a gigabyte in the future? That seems so big and crazy. When I was selling these eight megabyte memory modules for $650 each, the fact that I could buy an eight gigabyte flash card today for less than $8, that's just crazy, right? That seemed crazy at the time, but today here, it's not that big of a deal.  Well, I know that there are many who would agree with you, and it will be, of course, very interesting to see how things play out, which leads me to ask, okay, so Bitcoin arguably can be viewed as the first technological innovation to really give people an idea of how all the things could be decentralized. And so it's really just a surprise after a surprise to see how we humans are reacting to this totally new thing, which is where like, hey, nobody's in charge, but everybody's individual action certainly exerts influence. What would you say has surprised you most in this new decentralization of all the things? I think the variety of new ways that people have figured out how to use this technology is the most surprising. When I first got excited about Bitcoin, it was simply on the monetary side. This was a tool to separate money from state and give people 100% complete control over their own money. And I think that's still incredibly exciting and incredibly wonderful for the world. But now people are figuring out how to do all sorts of other amazing things that are good for the world with this same technology.  And they're figuring out, you know, more and more every week it seems like. So what an exciting time to be alive and to be a part of this. We had the Industrial Revolution previously, maybe we're in the midst of the Blockchain Revolution right now that's going to change the way all society works. You know, it's sure seeming like that. Speaking of alternative applications, I suppose this is still a currency-based application, but I would like to hear a bit more about your website, Bitcoin Bounty Hunter, because that I think is just interesting and tell us about it. Yeah, so it all started, I don't know, a year and a half ago or so. Some bad person with a bad set of morals on the internet contacted me and said that he was going to send the SWAT team to my parents' house and have them held at gunpoint by the police, by lying to the police that there's a hostage situation or whatever, and was threatening to do all sorts of bad things to me and my family, and was threatening to plant drugs in my suitcase and get me arrested for that, and just all sorts of crazy bad stuff, unless I paid them $20,000 in Bitcoin, then they promised that they would leave me alone. But of course, like people that are willing to threaten and extort people like that, why would I trust this person to leave me alone if I were to pay them? So rather than pay this person the money, the $20,000 that they were demanding in Bitcoin, I set up a website called BitcoinBountyHunter.com and offered the exact same amount, $20,000 for information that leads to the person's arrest and conviction. And one of the really exciting things that's going on with that website now is there's multiple different bounties from people that have committed crimes arrested. And one of the ones was DDoS for Bitcoin, who was a bad guy that was going around threatening all sorts of people. There's currently 110 Bitcoin bounty for that person's arrest and conviction up there, which is at the time we're talking right now, like $45,000 or so. And the person was arrested maybe a couple weeks ago now, and we're waiting for the trial or the plea to happen, but it's really exciting. And I've emailed back and forth a bit with the person that turned the criminal in and they emailed back and forth a little bit with the arresting police agency. And the guy said very clearly it was like the bounty that motivated him to turn in this guy, whereas if there wasn't a bounty maybe he wouldn't have marked out his friend or associate or whatever their relationship was, but I'm keeping a close eye on that and I think that's really exciting that it looks like the first arrest has taken place directly because of this bounty. Wow. Well incentives do indeed work. They sure do, as we see in the free market with all sorts of things. My goodness. And in addition to BitcoinBountyHunter.com, which has just successfully outed someone who was DDozing people as you say, you also compete quite effectively in the media space. You purchased and began running the outlet Bitcoin.com. Which is not only news, but you also have forums there. You hosted, I believe it was being called the world's largest AMA ever. And then you're also, you started a subreddit, the RBTC subreddit. So tell us a bit about your motivations to begin competing in the news and media space as well. I kind of got thrown into that one again, to be honest. So I wound up in control of Bitcoin.com and had less Bitcoins because of it, but that was okay. But initially I had tried to partner with a couple of different businesses and wanted them to run it and manage it because it's an incredibly powerful tool for new people that are brand new to Bitcoin and don't understand that there is no official Bitcoin CEO or no official Bitcoin website. You're not the CEO of Bitcoin? I'm not and there is nobody. I know you know that, but lots of people that are new to Bitcoin don't realize that. And lots of these people, they hear about Bitcoin in the news somewhere and they head right on over to Bitcoin.com because they just assumed that must be the official website for the official Bitcoin company. And so what I'm trying to do now is build a website that's really, really useful to these people who are brand new to Bitcoin to figure out what this is all about and why it's important to them in their lives to be useful for them in their lives. And then I also wanted to be useful to people who are doing with Bitcoin all day every day and I know that they already are very knowledgeable about it because we have news for those sorts of people. We have forums. We have something that I've been trying to launch for like two months now and as soon as I can get an EV SSL certificate for an onion domain, we'll launch that. But I'm having a bit of a trouble putting pressure on did you start to do that or Dunham Bradstreet to list something as simple as a phone number on a corporate registration thing they keep track of but that's a whole other complaint. But we have lots of exciting stuff in the works of Bitcoin.com. So we have quite a team that's developed. It's working on it full time. We have a bunch of price charts that just launched recently. We have lots and lots of stuff. So check back all the time. There's tons of stuff happening over there all the time. So Bitcoin.com. I think a lot of people that are experienced in the Bitcoin space maybe aren't really fully aware of that website yet and all the stuff that we have over there. But we have lots of great things. So go over there and start clicking around. There's lots of stuff and there's new stuff being added just about every day. All right. Well, I want to shift gears momentarily to perhaps something that more people associate with your persona as Bitcoin Jesus, which is to say that you have remarked several times in the past and even made comments on well publicized documentaries such as the VPRO documentary that you believe that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency has, if mass adopted, has the power to end war. Why do you believe that? So people are always going to fight and argue and be upset with other people. But if you look around the world, the number of, you know, average Joe murdering some other average Joe, yeah, that happens sometimes. But that's nothing compared to wars waged by government where they drop nuclear weapons on people, where they round up people by the millions and send them off to concentration camps, where they intentionally give blankets infected with smallpox to other people to kill them. Like these are government programs doing this sort of thing and all of those are funded either by direct taxation or by inflation and Bitcoin makes the inflation part by government's impossible and makes direct taxation a lot more difficult for them. And what a wonderful, wonderful thing. And if you look around the world, governments are causing all sorts of problems. They're holding back businesses from being able to produce as much wealth and make the world a better place. And they're restricting Uber from being able to give people rides where they want to go. They're restricting Walmart from being able to sell people, you know, products that they need in their lives. It's just insane when you look around that. And suddenly Bitcoin and this whole ecosystem that's developing strips away of these controlling bodies' ability to control. And if you think about it, you know, if you're living in the U.S., let's say, you know, let's say you live in California, none of the politicians in Washington, D.C. or in Sacramento have ever met you. They don't know anything about your life whatsoever, yet they constantly demand and threaten you and say that you have to obey their laws and their rules. And if you don't obey them, they'll send you to jail for it. And people just go about their lives thinking, yeah, that's just fine. Those are the people in government and they're doing that. But, like, you've never met them. They don't know about you. Why should they have any say in your life whatsoever?  But if you think about it, they're doing the exact same thing. And when it comes down to it, those people are nutcases for sending letters to hundreds of millions of other strangers around the country and demanding that they obey their laws and their rules and they'll send them to jail if they don't. It's madness what we have now. And Bitcoin's about to put the entire world on a level playing field where these strangers in far off cities no longer have the ability or the power to control people living in other parts of the world. And I think that's a wonderful thing for all of humankind and it's going to lead to a much more peaceful and prosperous society for everybody. So what's not to be excited about that? I mean, when you put it that way, I guess I can't think of anything not to be excited about. Well, to finish, I want to ask you outside of the Bitcoin realm because I know that you are an investor in many projects. What in particular has you excited right now outside of Bitcoin? So a lot of people maybe are under the impression that I was an angel investor before Bitcoin and that's what I was doing. I was a CEO of a tech company selling networking equipment and computer memory and I'd never made any investments ever in any sort of startup ever until I discovered Bitcoin and then I'd poured all the money that I had earned from my previous business into Bitcoin and Bitcoin startups and even to this day that's the only sort of thing that I've invested in. One that I'm particularly interested and excited about because I think it has the benefit of really impacting the world in a positive way is BitcoinHiveMind.com which is a decentralized prediction market which is really exciting and basically what it has the net effect of doing is with this tool we'll be able to harness the wisdom of crowds and it basically gives us it's almost like a window into the future where we can have all these experts that know about a particular topic think what they can bet with real money if we take this particular action today what is the likely outcome tomorrow or next year based on this action today. It's just such an amazingly powerful tool so that all of humanity can figure out what actions we should take today in order to achieve a particular set of ends tomorrow and nothing like that's been allowed to exist before. People try to set up things like that there were companies like Intrade and this and that but governments really didn't like that sort of thing because not only can they be used as a window into the future where you can see what's going to happen they can also be used as a tool to affect the future as well and governments want to be in control of everything and they want to take a big grip on it but what an exciting technology so for people that are just hearing about that are interested in this take a look at bitcoinhivemind.com I think that's really exciting and another one I just love because it brings new people to Bitcoin all the time is purse.io you can get 20 or 30% off every single purchase at Amazon that should get everybody excited about Bitcoin even if you don't care about monetary policy or moral philosophy or any of the other stuff that I'm talking about even if you love homes on people in foreign countries with your tax dollars you should still love purse.io because you can get 20 or 30% off every single purchase at Amazon so take a look at that if you haven't as well it's really easy purse.io is the website for that nice and now are predictions already being placed at Bitcoin Hivemind yet or is that a to come thing? it's a to come thing in the very very very near future and we're getting pretty darn close there I mean it would certainly be as you say like such a glimpse into the future to see experts or otherwise interested parties really like placing their money where their mouth is right it's like isn't that the thing about prediction markets they make it so that talk can't be cheap anymore like talk becomes price that's not a word costly there's a cost to associate with it and you're not going to risk your own money unless you genuinely think what you're thinking is right so there's a million and one people on the internet that will have a spouse all sorts of opinions about this or that but I think a lot of them wouldn't be as confident of their position or what they're saying if they didn't have to actually put some money on the line and that's what makes monetarily based prediction markets so incredibly powerful is that there's a financial incentive for you to be right there and what an incredibly powerful tool for all of humankind and the guy behind that project is a super super smart guy and as are a lot of people in the big point space but I'm really excited about that project in particular as well and I'm excited to see a launch. Well I can see why because it also ties back into your stance against war because the people who wage wars it seems that they profit whether they win or lose the wars regardless of how much destruction there is the people waging the war always profit and so they're not at all putting their money where their mouth is so to speak and so I really see a sort of circuitous, I see a pattern in the things that you support and yeah thanks so much for giving me your time and sharing of your projects. Always my pleasure thanks so much. Today's episode is brought to you by Bitshares a currency with a decentralized exchange built right into its wallet where you can trade user-issued tokens as well as asset-pegged smart coins all while holding your private keys the entire time. You're also invited to participate in the upcoming Bitshares liquidity event on February 29th. 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