Good evening and welcome to Tisky Sour. We have three massive stories for you this evening. First off, the Indian variant of coronavirus. Is it going to throw us off course in terms of the great unlocking? And why did Boris Johnson not do anything to control it for the past two months? We're also going to be talking about the latest from Palestine. Joe Biden has finally called for a ceasefire and the people of Palestine have gone on a 24-hour general strike. We've got a great guest lined up for you on that topic. And we are going to end with, I feel bad now that I've called it a big story, because it's not that big, but it is entertaining. It is the most astonishing answer yet. We have heard from a labour front venture when they're asked what their vision is. Get ready to cringe. Dalia, Gabriel, how are you doing? I'm doing good. I'm feeling consistently gaslit by this weather, like it's bright and sunny, and then in a tiny moment just turns into pissing it down with rain. So I'm very unnerved by it, but I'm doing well. Just never leave the house and it doesn't matter. It works for me. I'm just here on my computer streaming because it's raining outside, whatever. Sometimes I wander to the shops. That's all I can do. If it's raining, that's fine. As ever, what to do? Do tweet your comments, your questions, your thoughts on the hashtag Tisky Sour. Keep your super chats coming. And most importantly, if you have not already, do hit that subscribe button. Make sure you subscribe to the Lvaro Media YouTube channel. We go live three nights a week and we put videos out every day. Let's go straight on to our first story. The B16172 variant of coronavirus was first identified in India, and it is the single biggest threat to Britain leaving lockdown on schedule. That's because it's more transmissible. We know that for almost certain. It's potentially also more resistant to vaccines. That one we're less sure about. Both of those are in comparison to the Kent variant, which we know was already more transmissible than the original COVID variant. Much of this, as I've said, remains uncertain, but Boris Johnson has been clear that this could risk the current schedule of removing all COVID restrictions on the 21st of June. We're keeping everything under very close observation. We'll know a lot more in a few days of time. So it's not changing your approach yet? We're keeping everything under very, very careful, close review. We're looking at all the data as it comes in from places like Bolton, Blackburn, Bedford, Seft and other places. Just looking at those curves, whether they're moving, trying to understand whether the Indian variant is more transmissible. And if so, by how much more it's transmissible. And also trying to understand to what extent our vaccine program has already sufficiently fortified us all against it. And I'm afraid we've just got a few more days of looking at that data. But as things stand at the moment, I can see nothing conclusive in the data to say that we have to deviate from the present roadmap. But we've got to be cautious and we'll be letting people know in a few days time. So up for debate there is whether or not all restrictions will be removed on the 21st of June. Remember, we were supposed to be able to go to clubs and to basically fundamentally go back to normal. Depending on how transmissible this new variant is, that could be at risk. That's the future. There are some suggestions that there were people in government who were concerned about the loosening of restrictions that already happened this Monday. That's because of the spread of this new more transmissible variant. Guy has reported that urgent discussions were being held in Whitehall nearly two weeks ago over what to do about the Indian variant, with some advisors urging ministers not to proceed with this week's stage three lockdown lifting on Monday. Some scientists believe that decision to unlock was a mistake. While a Tory source said that some ministers were sympathetic to the idea, the PM was pressing ahead too fast. Now, this all makes sense. Again, lots of uncertainty. I could easily turn out to be the correct decision to open on Monday, but there are some significant risks here. And that's because while the vaccination program is going well, I think seven out of 10 adults have now had their first dose of the vaccine, that still leaves 30% of adults without it. And if you include children who at the moment can't be vaccinated, 45% of the population remain unvaccinated. Now, we don't know quite how much more transmissible the Indian variant is, but it could be up to 50% more transmissible. And so it's easy to imagine how opening bars and restaurants, which are in many cases frequented by people who are under 40 who might not have been offered that vaccine yet, that that could create new surges and new cases. As I say, in terms of what implications this will have, what exact implications this will have for policy in Britain, there are still more uncertainties to work out. Something we do know, though, is that because of this variant, our schedule for unlocking is at a risk it wasn't at beforehand. We were doing pretty well. If you remember what the politicians were saying, what the chief scientists were saying, it was almost getting close to everything is going as well as it possibly could have gone. That has all changed in the last two weeks, which raises the question, how did we get here? Why did Boris Johnson let us get here? I'm going to give you a timeline of how we got to this mess. And the key thing here is why it took so long for Boris Johnson to put India on the red list so that people would have to quarantine, go into mandatory hotel quarantine on arrival in Britain because of the prevalence of a variant of concern in India. Let's take you through the last couple of months. The 22nd of March is the first key date I'm going to show you. The surge of COVID cases in India was really rocketing by at this point 372,000 weekly cases, which has, which was triple the rate from three weeks before that. So you can see there's a huge outbreak. We talked about it at the time and still flights were coming into Britain. It wasn't on the red list on the 24th of March. India's health ministry warned of a double mutant variant. Then on the 2nd of April, the UK announces that four countries would be added to the red list, including Pakistan and Bangladesh, but not including India. Then on the 6th of April, new daily cases in India passed 100,000 per day. Johnson refuses to cancel his trade trip to India planned for later that month. We're going to go on to a few more dates in a moment. First of all, the thing to notice here, you've got a huge outbreak in India. We were talking about it at the time. Everyone was talking about it at the time because it was so shocking and awful. Still is, by the way. We also knew by that point in time that there was a significant variant of concern in India. Boris Johnson had a trade trip planned to India, which even though there were 100,000 cases per day in India, he did not cancel. He said, we're going to go forward with that trade trip, Pakistan and Bangladesh on the red list. India, not for some reason. No good reason, which is what I'm going to go on to in a moment. First of all, some more dates for you. 15th of April, for the first time, the B1617 variant appears on official statistics of cases in the UK. That was with 77 cases detected. Then on the 19th of April, the number of cases with Indian variant rises to 103. Boris Johnson then finally cancels his trip to India and Matt Hancock announces India will be placed on the red list. However, it's not for another four days until red list restrictions come into force for travellers from India. So you can see there, lots and lots and lots of stalling. It was a month between the period when the Indian Health Ministry warned of this new mutant and Britain introduced restrictions for travellers from India. So this could have been foreseen well in advance and nothing happened. Now, as I said, the key question here is why did India get placed on the red list three weeks after Bangladesh and Pakistan? Why would that happen? Now, the accusation against Boris Johnson is that's because he was trying to work out a trade deal with India, but not the other two countries. What the government are trying to push back and say is no, there were epidemiological reasons why we made that distinction between India and Pakistan and Bangladesh.  He said, the truth is that when we put Pakistan and Bangladesh on the red list, positivity among those arriving from those countries was three times higher than it was among those arriving from India. Now, that would be a good argument. Unfortunately, it doesn't tally with the data from test and trace. And so some of these statistics, we got from a great report in the mirror. I should credit them for this really. And these are the proportions of people who tested positive for COVID-19 on arrival to Britain from Pakistan, which was 6% from India, which was 5% and from Bangladesh, which was 4%. That was from the period the 25th of March to the 7th of April. As you can see, they're very difficult to explain why Pakistan and Bangladesh were put on the red list, but India wasn't. It's also the case that India had more people coming in actually with variants of concerns than in Pakistan and Bangladesh. So absolutely no reason why they should have been treated differently when it comes to the science of all of this. That's why we think it was potentially because of the politics of all of this. Let's go to the politics. It's because Britain, or it seems to be because Britain was desperate to sign a trade deal with the world's sixth largest economy. And that was certainly the suggestion in this morning's Politico playbook email. So in that email this morning, it gives you a bigger review of the news to come that day. Alex Wickham writes, why did they delay? Despite Downing Street's strenuous denials, there is barely anyone in Westminster who doesn't think the government held off putting India on the red list because Johnson had a trade trip to the country planned. Now, Wickham also referenced a source who suggested that senior scientific advisors were warning that India should be placed on the red list at least 10 days ahead of the cancellation of Johnson's trip on April the 19th. And Wickham had more info from the same source. So he writes, the same person said memos from British officials to staff based in India had queried if the trip ought to go ahead from late March onwards. A scientist scrambled to work out why infections were rocketing in the nation. This, they said, is underlined by notes on technical briefings on tracking variants, which note an Indian strain as far back as April the 1st, some seven weeks ago. Now, as I said, there are still a lot of unknowns about the precise details, the precise danger of this variant. But what we do know is that there are currently 2,967 known cases of the Indian variant, or cases which have been identified in Britain, which is up 28% since Monday. So clearly, something quite worrying going on. Darlia, I want your thoughts on this. Yet again, it seems that we have had Boris Johnson put politics in a short-term economic interest ahead of public health. In terms of the economy, it's clearly going to backfire if he now has to delay the ultimate unlocking of the economy. But it does seem like no lessons have been learned at all over the past 12 months. I mean, that is the story of Johnson's handling of the pandemic, isn't it? And I just want to say, you think everything is under control and going a schedule, but then someone whips out the phrase, double mutant variant, and you're like, oh, we're just puny puny humans. We don't stand a chance. But first of all, it goes without saying that we've seen time and time again in this pandemic, and it's been exposed by this pandemic, something that we always knew, which is that bordering choices are political. There's always this kind of idea that borders are necessary for scientific or objective reasons. But they're primarily governed, actually, by both geopolitical but also domestic political desires and powers plays. And we know that from the fact that despite the US having one of the highest per capita infection rates, that I don't think we've had far less restriction on movement between the US and the UK than we have for other countries where they've had a much lower per capita rate of infection. But this is also, I think, I think there's two issues here. So there's the fact that, again, this is this problem with Johnson's way of handling this pandemic that has come back to bite us over and over again of sort of over promising and over committing and then making it very difficult to then leave space to make the decisions that are responsive to the actual conditions on the ground and to what is actually in the best interests of everyone. And that flexibility and expectation is so important with this virus, because as we've known, its patterns are not entirely predictable. And we can see this by the massive spike in India. Even though this virus has been with us for a year now, we haven't seen conditions like that until this particular moment. And we saw this in the UK at Christmas, where Boris makes this big PR stunt about saving Christmas, which was all about politics and optics, only that to then turn around and give people 24 hours notice that they had to stay put, during which a lot of people just went ahead with their plans anyway. And we're seeing it again with this bombastic commitment that everything's going to go back to normal on the 21st of June.  But also that we are unlikely to actually have a complete return to and I don't want to say normal, but a return to a time where what we can do is not so heavily defined and governed by this virus. And that's unlikely for a very long time, not least because vaccination programs in the global South countries, in global South countries are thanks to, you know, vaccine protectionism in the UK and in Europe and North America, that, you know, vaccination programs are not nowhere near where we need them to be. But also because this virus mutates, right? And we know that that possibility of a mutation that is, you know, as contagious or even more contagious and which can circumvent the vaccine and put us back into a very difficult position, that possibility is not small. It's not negligible. It's very real. And yet this claim that we can put a date on when we no longer have to go into manage living with this virus is an attempt at political point scoring that is detached from reality and actually damages our long-term ability to adjust to living with this virus in different ways. And we know this from the past that over-promising leads to under-compliance and it leads to lack of trust. So we're in a situation now where even though many scientists have long been suggesting that, you know, opening up at the speed because of, you know, the variant was discovered in India, but also because of the delays to AstraZeneca being given to younger people, that opening up at the speed that we were promised is not a good idea. But Johnson is finding himself in a position where he has to, where it feels impossible to take decisions that are scientifically and medically sound. But I also think, and this is perhaps a bit more, this is related to that point, and it's perhaps not necessarily, I think it just kind of goes to, again, like the fragility of the progress in comparison to the way that Boris Johnson wants to portray it, which is, you know, through this idea that, you know, we can place dates on when we're going to go entirely back to 2019 to have things to wear in 2019. And I think it comes down as well to this fact, to this idea that the government strategy has been to sort of treat and talk about the vaccine as this kind of fix all magic bullet that's going to take us back to before this was ever, you know, in our lives. But we know not only because of the possibility of mutations, but also the increased likelihood of other pandemics, thanks to, you know, as a result of climate change and other reasons that the vaccine is a huge development. It's a great development. It's a brilliant development, but it's not a fix all building the infrastructure to cope with pandemics to cope with possible mutations and variants that can circumvent the vaccine. And that includes things like a robust and reliable test track and trace system, a robust social safety net so that people can make decisions based on, you know, whether they can keep what is in the best interest of their health and the health of their community rather than, you know, having to go to work, even if it's not safe, but also infrastructures of care so that people are not sort of left to fend them for themselves for months on end, when these kinds of public health crises happen. And that developing that infrastructure alongside the vaccine is actually the only way that we can have a resilient or long term sense of normalcy. And I think that to an extent the vaccine is offering a dangerously reductive sense of hope that, you know, is allowing the government to kind of paper over the fact that they haven't learned the lessons from this pandemic to actually prepare us for the very real possibility of, you know, vaccine resistant mutations and other public health crises that are likely to become more regular as a result of climate change. And one of the reasons that countries like South Korea were so effective in managing this pandemic even before there was a vaccine and even before we understood even how to treat the virus well was because they learned the lessons from SARS and they built the infrastructure and were able to rely on that infrastructure that had been built as a result of the SARS pandemic. But I'm not convinced that the government has done the same here. And that worries me. Oh, yeah, I mean, worry is a good conclusion, I think, to this whole Ferrari. And we're going to go through one other controversy today. This has been again about travel, but not so much about the holes in the restrictions in the past, but what the new rules are and the confusion about what the new rules are. So if you weren't aware, travel is no longer holidays are no longer banned. That's since Monday. We now have a traffic light system where countries are either on the green, the amber or the red list on the green list, you can go there with fairly few restrictions. The red list is as it always was, you're not supposed to go there at all. The amber list. Government ministers have been fairly ambiguous about when and when, when you should and shouldn't go, sorry, on visits to those places. Now that was a line of attack from Keir Starmer to Boris Johnson today at PMQs. Let's take a look at that exchange. Mr Speaker, I think everybody would agree that having moved 170 countries to the amber list, absolute clarity is needed about the circumstance in which people can travel to an amber country. Yesterday morning, the environment secretary said people could fly to amber list countries if they wanted to visit family or friends. By the afternoon, a government health minister said nobody should travel outside Britain this year and traveling is dangerous. The prime minister said that travel to amber countries should only be where it's essential. By the evening, the Welsh secretary suggested some people might think a holiday is essential. The government's lost control of the messaging, so can the Prime Minister answer a really simple question that goes to the heart of this? If he doesn't want people to travel to amber list countries, if that's his position, he doesn't want them to travel to amber list countries, why is he made it easier for them to do so? Prime Minister. Mr Speaker, I think that after more than a year of this, I think that the Prime Minister would understand that what the public would like to see is some effort to back up what the government is saying, to deliver clarity of messages, and on his point about legal bans, as he knows, we're trying to move away from endlessly legislating for everything and to rely on guidance and asking people to do the right thing. And it is very, very clear, you should not be going to an amber list country, except for some extreme circumstance such as the serious illness of a family member. You should not be going to an amber list country on holiday, Mr Speaker. I imagine he wants to take a holiday, but you should not be going to an amber list country on holiday. If you do go to an amber list country, then as I say, we will enforce the 10 day quarantine period.  Because for me, of things to attack the government for some ambiguity about what the amber category means when it comes to travel is kind of unreasonable, because there are always going to be some areas of ambiguity. I think it kind of makes sense to say that green countries, you can be fairly relaxed about the red countries are going to be almost impossible to go to. And the amber ones is going to be a real rigmarole to go there. But if you really need to for a funeral or for an operation, you can do. That's not just to say that Keir Starman was wrong to use that as the attack line.  He didn't say, look, we're going to need to have some ambiguity when it comes to COVID rules. The world isn't particularly black and white. It's fine to have some areas where the rules might seem quite arbitrary, but that's just us trying to respond to a complicated situation. No, instead, he says, you Labour Party, I think what the government wants to hear is you backing everything we say.  Anyone who watches that exchange is absolutely none the wiser. And when it comes to what political debate we should be having about travel, it's not this issue is, Oh, the public relations aren't good enough. The Keir Starman classic line of the messaging isn't clear. What we need is clarity. What we need is clarity. You know, clarity might be fine. It's better to be clear than not clear if you can be clear. But the real issue here, the real problem with travel over the past six months, in fact, over the past 12 months, over the past 18 months, is that we haven't had a proper democratic democratic debate about what we value. And I think the Indian variant is the key example here. I think if we'd had a proper debate back at the start of the year, where they said, look, we have two options, we can either basically make travel really, really difficult just for this short temporary period of time, as they did in New Zealand and Australia and Vietnam. And that will mean that we have way less uncertainty in our route out of lockdown, we could do that, we could decide that, or we could decide that we think travel in between countries is so important, that we're going to not enforce something along the lines of mandatory hotel quarantine. Now, we took the second decision. Well, I say we took the second decision. Actually, my point is we did not take that second decision, because I bet you if they'd asked the public that that question and had a serious growing up debate, they would have gone for the first one. But no, what they did is they listened to basically the aviation sector, all of these vested interests, who would prefer to take the short term risk, because the biggest risk for them is losing business, right? And then that's how we're in this messed up situation. So you've got the Labour Party who are just saying, we don't really have any political problem with anything you're saying, we just want you to say it more competently and more clearly. Then you've got Boris Johnson saying, I don't even know why you're critiquing me at all, we're in a public health crisis, you shouldn't even be in opposition. And then we're all just watching, none the wiser, the media will lap it up because they love any kind of ambiguity.  And I just think it really demonstrates how ridiculous so much of the public debate has been around this, this pandemic and how much that means we've missed, because there are serious, serious debates we could be having, which are of real consequence, which are being missed, because the media find it just so easy to report on, you know, this is unclear, that's unclear. Anyway, just something that personally frustrates me. I just needed to get that off my chest. We are going to go straight on to our next story before we do that. If you're enjoying the show, do like the stream. Joe Biden has called for a significant de-escalation by both Israel and Hamas and has urged both parties to pursue a ceasefire. Now, this is an incredibly weak stance. It ignores that this is not a mere conflict, but an ongoing occupation and it ignores how casualties have fallen overwhelmingly on one side, just to call for a ceasefire, to call for both sides to stop exerting violence. As Ash Sarkar said in a recent show, it flattens the whole history, the whole context of what's going on here. However, whilst this is an incredibly weak statement from Joe Biden, it is still an improvement because up to this point, he has actually been resisting any call for a ceasefire whatsoever. So even the most tepid stance, he has been resisting, not just resisting, he's been blocking it at the UN. So some improvement. Meanwhile, in Palestine, a 24-hour strike has come to a close. Now, this is really significant. A strike across the whole of historic Palestine, all Palestinians taking part of the vast majority taking part, shutting down businesses for 24 hours at protest, at apartheid occupation, at the airstrikes in Gaza. Now, during that strike, as is usually the case in historic Palestine, peaceful protesters were subject to intense repression by Israeli security forces, and that included this incident at the Damascus gates in East Jerusalem. So what you saw there was a peaceful protest, and then the Israeli police throwing stun grenades at protesters. Now, a stun grenade, if you live in Britain like me, you probably never experienced one. What that means is the police throw something at you that bangs so loudly, that flashes so brightly, that you're completely disorientated for a few seconds, you struggle to see and struggle to hear, completely disorientating, which is why everyone runs away because it's horrible to be around. That's the purpose of that particular weapon, I suppose, really. As well as those stun grenades, we've also seen over the last two days, which is not new, by the way, but it's come to light, been raised, become more prominent over the last two days, is Israeli police have been spraying rancid water on Palestinians. Now, this is so appalling, really created a lot of shock on social media quite rightly. We're going to show you a clip that explains what's going on in this respect. This is a reporter, Mark Stone, and this is a clip from Sky News. And here in Sheikh Jarrah, about an hour ago, we saw something which happens a lot too at the moment. That is a water cannon, but it's not of the type that you might see in Europe or America, because it's got skunk water in, which has a rancid smell, takes days to get off your skin. And what it does is they spray it ostensibly for crowd control. But I can tell you, because I was here and I saw it with my eyes, they were not controlling a crowd that needed to be controlled. They were controlling a small group of youngsters who posed no threat to them, and yet they fired the water cannon into a Palestinian community and all over Palestinian houses. The Palestinians and human rights groups say this is effectively a form of collective punishment. And lastly, down at the Damascus Gate a little bit earlier on, as part of this mass movement of Palestinians expressing their views, a group of Palestinians were walking out of the Damascus Gate of the Old City and up the steps there. And then without any warning, the Israeli police threw stun grenades and everyone, everyone fled. Again, unnecessary crowd control. We've put this to the Israeli police. We've asked them why they're doing this sort of thing. And they say where they make mistakes, they investigate. But you know, I've worked here for quite some time. And I can tell you that when you ask the Israelis for investigation, they say they're doing one, but you never actually get the results. Those are the facts. That's what's happening here on the ground. We do ask the Israelis for a response. They say they'll give it. Often it doesn't come. So lots to talk about over the past 48 hours, that general striker form of resistance, that appalling grotesque repression you saw there in those two clips, and also a changing stance from the United States from Joe Biden to talk about all three things. I'm delighted to be joined by Nasser al-Masri, a Palestinian American PhD candidate in political science at MIT, and a member of the Palestinian youth movement. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. I want to start by talking about the strike, and in particular, the strategy of the strike. Now, most of our audience will be familiar with the purpose of a strike usually, to cause losses to your boss so that they have to listen to their workers. In this context, as a decolonial context or a context where you're fighting a state, what does a strike do? What's the strategy? What leverage is being used there? Yeah, I think there are a number of different parts that we can focus on here. First, this strike has beyond just having the economic consequences that it will have, which I'll discuss in a moment. I think it was important because it brought together Palestinian youth across all areas where Palestinians are living, and beyond Palestinian youth as well. Of course, there's a bunch of civil society groups that were signed on to the strike as well. Historically, Palestinians have been very fragmented, and it's not just related to internal struggles or ideology or location, etc., but it's just the fact that they live in different places and under different circumstances in refugee camps and other parts of the West Bank as Palestinian citizens of Israel in historic Palestine and Gaza and Lebanon, etc. I think that's one of the key components here, but more directly to the point here, the strike had significant consequences I think on the Israeli economy and showed the power that Palestinians have. I think one of the biggest sectors that uses Palestinian labor inside of Israel is construction. There are something like 65,000 construction workers that come from the occupied West Bank and come into Israel to work. Reportedly, 110 of them showed up out of 65,000 yesterday. You can imagine the consequences. I saw some numbers that were in the ballpark of $40 million were basically lost yesterday, which I think translates to something like 30 million British pounds. I think if we're talking about numbers, this is just in one day, and you can imagine that the delays in the backups will become extremely costly. Even beyond the construction industry, 50% or so of Palestinian citizens of Israel, 50% of the pharmacists, they make up 25% of doctors and nurses. More than half the construction workers. We're talking about almost a fifth or around a fifth of the labor force. Didn't show up to work yesterday. You can imagine the consequences it had. You can imagine the pressure it puts on the Netanyahu government, or on Benjamin Netanyahu, and this process they're going through an attempt to form a government. You can imagine the consequences it has, as you say, for their bosses. The end goal here was to leverage that power across all the places where Palestinians are living in order to make their voices heard in a more direct material way, if you will. Let's talk about the other form of pressure being exerted on Israel right now, which is international. Calling it pressure might be being too kind to what Joe Biden is currently doing, but he has moved from, I suppose, a completely morally abject position, which is to say Israel has an absolute right to self-defense, and therefore essentially condoning the airstrikes in Gaza to saying what I want to see is a ceasefire. Is that a significant shift? Does that exert pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu? Do you think that means a ceasefire will essentially happen quite soon now? Yeah, it's hard to say when it will happen. I think there's something to think about here. I think on the U.S. side, Biden has obviously the U.S. has blocked security, council resolutions multiple times this week, but Biden is feeling the pressure, and he has. This is the same thing with his immigration policy recently that he backtracked on. We were talking about COVID a little bit earlier and related to the patents. He's backtracked on a significant number of issues, and the pressure is breaking through to him. What does it mean for an actual ceasefire? I couldn't say for certain, but it looks like the negotiations that I've been ongoing behind the scenes, it appears to be at a point where Israel has a desire to continue pummeling Gaza using this collective punishment. The fact that Biden is finally leveraging pressure on Netanyahu, I would imagine in the next week you're going to hear, if not a ceasefire, you're going to hear an outcome of rejected ceasefire by Israel, which I think could potentially bring the United States and Israel at sort of longer heads about where they're going. I don't know for certain if Netanyahu can withstand Biden's pressure. We're going to find out what he thinks he can do. He's already taken actions that he wouldn't have taken under Obama's presidency. It's unclear exactly what is going to develop. I have a sense that in the next week or so you're going to see some conclusions coming out regarding whether they're going to stop or not. Obviously, a ceasefire is urgently needed, not least, well, mainly for the people who are living in Gaza who are living through hell right now. At the same time, there is a danger that as soon as the ceasefire is announced, the world's media say, problem solved, quiet has happened again, quiet has returned, the pressure goes off Joe Biden. The scenes, I showed at the start of this section of Israeli police firing skunk water at people, rancid water at Palestinians, the kind of thing, it just seems so degrading, so dehumanizing and throwing stun grenades at peaceful protesters, obviously the expulsion of citizens of Sheikh Jarrah. The list can go on of the various oppressions which are separate from airstrikes in Gaza. Are you concerned that once a ceasefire happens, Israel will essentially once again be off the hook? Yeah. This is not the first time that there's been an extensive bombardment of Gaza. There's been coverage of it and then it sort of went back to the status quo afterwards happened in 2014, 2008 and 2009. I keep going back in time. And so I'm absolutely with you that that is a potential danger. I think there's a couple of things that are different this time. So for the first time, at least in history, I say the first time in history really, the US Congress, US Congress people have made their voices heard regarding their concerns about not only Israeli actions, concerns is a very like word, their complete opposition to sort of Israeli violence. But they've also called on the president of the United States and other of their, you know, counterparts in Congress to bring about an end of US support to Israel, especially the blank check that they provide to Israel every year. And so I think I don't think we should wash that away as nothing. I think this is a meaningful move in the right direction. You know, the sort of Congress has moved to the left, I think, to the surprise of some folks in the United States. And I think a lot of younger folks increasingly are aware of what is going on in Palestine and elsewhere and are strongly supporting sort of changes in US policy. And that relates to the second point, which is a lot of this was broadcast on social media. The traditional news media, you know, you're not included, right? The work being done here is fantastic. But the traditional news media, we're talking CNN, Reuters, right, et cetera. A lot of these news media are not they're not giving fair coverage to Palestinians. And you know, I could I could share tons of statistics on how much they cover Palestinian deaths versus Israeli deaths, for example. So I think there's a significant shift in sort of the way people are understanding what's going on in Palestine, the views that people have. And I think it's going to come to a tipping point at some point in the near future, if it's not immediately after this sort of episode of Israeli violence, then it will be in the near future. Because I think folks really are now understanding what is going on in Palestine. They're now no longer under the delusions that the media has for so long, sort of presented, you know, particularly the largest corporations in the media, I should say. And so I think that's a significant shift. But that being said, I think you're absolutely right. When things quiet down, people will, you know, the status quo, returning the status quo is not ideal. Gaza is still under siege. People still can't access health care. People are, you know, the families in Sheikh Jarrah are still awaiting a court's ruling on whether they're allowed to live in their homes that they came to after they were forced out, you know, in in the 1940s and 1950s. And so, you know, this is, I think, definitely a great concern of Palestinians. I think this momentum is starting to push Palestinians to talk across, you know, sort of these quote unquote borders that that exist between them. And so there's, there's a strong hope that further organization will will continue to occur among especially the sort of re-energized youth in Palestine. But let's be honest, it's hard to overturn oppressive regime policies. And so this is going to be a difficult uphill fight. And so there needs to be a continuing spotlight on what is going on. But yes, it's a concern. Yes, I think there's a lot of things different. And I am actually, I think for the first time, more hopeful than I am worried that the future will hold much of the same. And finally, I've got a very difficult question for you, because it sort of looks into the future. It's going to be some guesswork, I suppose. But, you know, just just taking the general strike as an inspiration. If, you know, we've had lots of lots of Palestinians on in the last two weeks who have sort of said there does seem to be a level of unity among Palestinians, both, you know, within historic Palestine and in the diaspora, to an extent that hasn't been seen, you know, recently.  What do you think will be most, most prominent? You know, we've got this general strike as an example now. What should people be watching out for, do you think? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think sort of a continuance of strikes, I think you'll see. I think this has been an immensely effective and, you know, sort of, it's a type of, it's a type of activity that can sort of focus folks on the same, on the same target, which is, you know, in this case, sort of the economy. I think one of the hardest things is that to, you know, to mobilize around the fact that there are so much divisions among Palestinians. And like I said, I'm talking about borders, a limitation for Palestinians to get inside of Israel for the, you know, people in Gaza to connect with those in the West Bank. So, you know, if I'm thinking forward, I think actions like the strike will be at least the starting point. I imagine that coordination across, you know, across time and place is going to be difficult, made more difficult by Israel. There's going to be, you know, sort of, there's been this attempt to sort of localize the various struggles of Palestinians. And so I think you're also going to see one of the key, key, you know, sort of groups here are going to be folks in the West, you know, sort of leveraging their, you know, political power to pressure their governments to sort of continue pushing change in Palestine. It's a difficult question. It really is. It's, you know, the Palestinians, you know, people that I've spoken to who have very close family on the ground and me and myself and others, they're saying that, you know, people are not sure what's going to come next, but people are energized and they're looking for the sort of the next thing. And so I imagine they'll start with, you know, a continuance of strikes. I imagine you'll see some new organizations or the combination of multiple existing organizations coming together. And I think, yeah, I think there's a lot of question marks to be completely blunt. But this is more hope than I think we've seen in a long time, including from the older generation. I think that's something that really, really has inspired me is they are excited for the first time in a long time. That's our mastery. It's a positive note to end on in what's, you know, a situation where it's difficult to find positive notes. Thank you so much for coming on. We've really appreciated you giving your time to us this evening. Thank you, Michael. Let's go back to Palestinian resistance in the UK or resistance to the war against Palestine in the UK. You know, compared to a general strike, this might seem insignificant, but I do think that actually in terms of public opinion in this country, very, very significant, two more top footballers have taken out the Palestinian flag after a game. This was a Premier League game this time. Last time it was the FA Cup Final. After a match against Fulham, Manchester United's Paul Pogma and Amadiello held up a Palestinian flag. Now, I should say to you earlier this week, a little insight into my WhatsApp chats of Aaron Mestani. Aaron messaged me after the FA Cup Final when two footballers have heard out the Palestinian flag. He said, if Paul Pogba, if Paul Pogba waves the Palestinian flag after a football match, it's over. Then two days later, it happened. Dali, I want to go to you on this. I know we normally avoid football when it's just us two on the shows because we struggle, but it does seem like the resistance to the oppression of Palestinians is really widespread. It's by no means just limited to the usual suspects this time around. I feel like potentially a tide could be turning. I think it's really difficult to say as Nasser pointed out, I think oftentimes when there are these flash points, these sieges, obviously there is an ongoing constant violence taking place, but we often see a lot of people speaking out and we see a bit more awareness being built and it often feels like things are about to change. Then once there's a ceasefire, we go back to that status quo. I think the fact that Nasser mentioned that the older generation are feeling differently about this is really significant, but I think the fact that we are seeing people speaking out now, particularly in the UK, and I think the shift in Congress in the US is absolutely a watershed because there's always been a very different approach in Europe. There's always been a much stronger Palestine solidarity movement in Europe than in the US. It's always been very difficult, but the fact that we're seeing people speaking out is so significant because I tweeted about this earlier. I think today, I can't remember, days are a myth to me now, but there's been so much thrown at stigmatizing being internationalist in public life, in the public sphere. It's been portrayed, especially over the past few years, it's been portrayed as everything from snowflake, woke nurse or bleeding heart liberalism to actually very dangerous, where anyone who, people who express internationalist solidarity, especially with Palestinians, is marked as dangerous and to be excommunicated from public life. The fact that people are still speaking out and that attempt to stigmatize internationalism in that way is not, hasn't stuck is incredibly reassuring because I was concerned. I was worried that it had been effective. But I think contextualizing especially this, even though Biden's response here is, it's a slight nudge, but it's still entirely insufficient because you can't really call for ceasefire between two parties when you're practically drowning the much more powerful party or the much more powerful side in money and weapons. It doesn't really make sense. But I think another reason that the diaspora, the diasporic and also the growing anti-racist consciousness, particularly in the global north, in the US and Europe, is also important because we need to understand how rooted in racism, the justificatory mechanisms that are used for occupation are, when we think about, and in what ways has clear attack and clear oppression been successfully framed as self-defense. And it comes down to this idea that Arabs, Palestinians, Muslims, people who, you know, we are grouped together on the basis that we have something to be afraid of, that we're inherently dangerous, inherent, irrationally barbaric, and that preemptive violence is required and inevitable and natural because of who we are. And that is why this violence is indiscriminate. That is why it's constant because it's the mere existence of Palestinians that is deemed threatening. And there is something about, you know, the use of rancid water being sprayed on people in a way that sticks to their bodies for so, you know, as they kind of, for days afterwards, that is so kind of symbolic of that. And I think that that awareness of the role that racism plays of how, you know, this idea of reframing and being able to successfully frame occupation as self-defense and how rooted that is and how much it resonates with those scripts of fear and disgust in which Arabs and Muslims are enmeshed and how powerful that is. And I think that that growing anti-racist consciousness that we've been seeing since 2015 has played a really significant role in, you know, how diaspora, diasporic communities, whether Arabs or not Arabs, are responding and understanding really what's going on here and is cutting through a lot of that media discourse. And I think that's all super, super important, especially cutting through that, that media discourse. It can feel like a bit of a barrier has been broken. Maybe that's just, maybe I'm being overly hopeful today. Let's go to a couple of comments. Dina Alaksa tweets on the hashtag Tiski Sauer, listening to Tiski Sauer live today, very glad to see Navarra Media continue to platform Palestinians, not just as a one-off, but as a much needed continuous conversation about the human rights crisis the Palestinian people are facing right now. Really important comment. Thank you so much for that. I've been thinking today, you know, it sounds kind of hippie-ish, but you know, the fact that we can do all of these interviews on Zoom and the fact that we can speak to so many Palestinians during this onslaught by Israel, I think has just so massively improved my understanding of what's going on. And I am just really delighted that we've been able to speak to so many people in historic Palestine and Palestinians in the diaspora. And yeah, I mean, obviously I completely concur with that comment. I just have to, I suppose, express my appreciation to all of the guests we've had over the past two weeks as well. Also a thanks to Zena Sawafta for the £10 Super Chat that's very kind. Of course, we do love your Super Chats. We are also completely dependent on our supporters. If you are a supporter, thank you so much. If not, please do go to navarramedia.com slash support and donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month. Final story. The Labour Party has been struggling of late to explain what it stands for. This has damaged the personal reputation of party leader Keir Starmer and has also left shadow cabinet members in awkward positions when they're asked about Labour's vision and they have nothing to say. The farce continued when shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth appeared on Good Morning Britain to give this astonishing answer. Have you guys sat down yet and decided what policy? I mean, have you spoken to Keir Starmer?  What does the Labour Party stand for? Have you had that conversation yet? Well, of course, we have a shadow ministerial... Can you share it with us, then? What does the Labour Party stand for? Confidential meetings, I can't... Confidential meetings?  So it's confidential. You know, normally when Keir Starmer gets asked what's your vision, he says something completely banal, you know, our vision is we're going to look outwards, our vision is we're going to speak to the country, you know, it means absolutely nothing, but at least it kind of, you know, it works syntactically, even if it doesn't have any content. Jonathan Ashworth just went, it's confidential! Sorry, we may or may not have a vision, but if we did, I wouldn't be able to tell you, right? You know, it is defenc... Not many people were defending him, by the way, but if you were to defend him, you say, look, we're four years out from a general election, there was a very important set of elections earlier this month, and the Labour Party was surprised that in those elections they did really poorly when, you know, what they stand for is confidential, right? So you've got a vote to say, should I vote for the Conservative Party, who are offering me a vaccine rollout, who are offering to re-industrialise the North of England, who are, you know, offering to make Britain great again, or should I vote for the Labour Party, whose policies are confidential? You know, is it any surprise that Labour tanked in those elections when you've got the Shadow Health Secretary? You know, very, very important job being asked what Labour's vision is, what it stands for, and saying, well, that was discussed, but those meetings were confidential. Let's go to the next bit of that clip, because after getting teased by the host for his ridiculous answer, Ashworth tries to recover by giving a more concrete response to the vision question. Let's take a look. The Labour Party understands that we have got to speak to the British people about their priorities and their interests and their concerns, and we're launching a big policy review, which we're going to take to the country, and we're going to engage the country in a discussion and a debate, and we're going to listen to the country about what it is they want, how they want this country to change, because when I travel across the country, and I see it for myself in my own Leicester constituency and where I live in Leicester, that we can do much better than we're doing at the moment. Our schools can be much better, our NHS can be much better. We've got nearly 5 million people on the waiting list. We need to sort that out. We can do much better to make the air that we breathe cleaner, and our communities greener, and we can do more to invest in making our communities safer, and we've got to do more in the economy, so people have well-paid jobs, not relying on low-pay temporary work or zero-hours contracts, so they can buy their own home. These are big issues that we're going to be focusing on in the weeks and months ahead. It is ironic, though, isn't it, Jonathan Ashworth, when you say we need to tell the electorate what we stand for, but we can't yet, because it's confidential. Well, I was talking about the particular meeting, but I mean, look, we are going to be having a big policy review with the country, and the cost of meeting is not that confidential. That's more of a sort of throwaway comment, but look, we're having a big policy debate and discussion with the country, and you'll see Labour coming out with exciting ideas. I have to say, I kind of preferred the answer that it was confidential. At least it was more memorable, because what did he say there? He tries to recover himself, save himself, because we've got to speak to the British people about their priorities and their interests and their concerns. Do you not have any priorities, interests or concerns? The point of politics and political leadership is you have some concerns, and you talk to the electorate about them, and yeah, you then listen to the electorate's concerns, and you consider whether you should change your policies or whether you should modify them, but you don't go to the electorate with absolutely nothing, because if you go to them with absolutely nothing, then what are you bringing to the table? You're not bringing anything to the table, right? And Labour there are not bringing anything to the table. When he does talk about more concrete things, it's just a list of a bunch of nice things. We'll make schools better, we'll make the NHS better, we'll make the air we breathe cleaner. Literally, anyone could say that. You can be from any political party, say, oh, we'll make the NHS better. It's just a list of nice things. You have to explain why the Tories can't deliver that, why the Tories haven't delivered that. You can't just say, oh, we'll make everything better. What's your vision? Oh, we're to make things better party, right? It doesn't, it doesn't stack up. Darlia, I want your take on this particular interview. It was a bit of a head in hands moment, wasn't it?  It feels like every time I come on Tiskey, there's another one of these interviews. And I'm just, my question is, how have they not workshopped a better response to this? It's been several weeks now. Like, this is not a gotcha question. This is not unpredictable. Like, it's been several weeks now, these shambolic media appearances, where they have been challenged on this. And I don't understand how Keir Starmer has all of the discipline in the world when it comes to what socialist MPs tweet about and socialist party members and expelling people and all of this. And yet doesn't have the ability to discipline his own front bench into effectively answering a question that everyone is asking and has been asking for several weeks. And that should be really, should be easy to answer. But also, it makes me think about going back to the earlier story in this week, in this show, where, you know, that, that, that Starmerite tactic of, you know, when he challenges the government quote unquote, I've just sort of basically endorsing the fundamental political and ideological values that guide what the government does. But just sort of saying that the government is incompetent at delivering it. That doesn't work when you look significantly more incompetent, you need a better tactic. And I think also that's the kind of strategic question, but then thinking about actually, you know, the kind of moral and the ethical and the political question here. We are living in a moment when there is so much space for really transformative vision and for really transformative thinking, you know, we've got multiple crises that are overlapping with each other from, you know, climate to COVID to the crisis in employment in, you know, the fact that so much of the work that people do is not good, not enough to sort of put, to adequately look after themselves and to adequately have security and stability. And this is one of those historical moments, you know, once in not just a generation, but several generations opportunity where the contradictions and the problems in the existing system are being sharpened and are being lived through in really visceral ways.  And we have to remember that, that this is how neoliberalism itself gained power. It was through approaching a moment in crisis with transformative, obviously, we believe for the negative transformative visions and building the power to make that actually happen. And it's not easy. It's not a struggle. It's an uphill, it's not easy. You know, it's an uphill struggle, but it's also incumbent upon us. It's our historical duty as the generation living in this particular moment, where we meet this cross section of crises to be up to that job. And for labor, you know, something called the Labor Party to be languishing in this moment and to be so indifferent and so anemic and to have no ambition other than to simply lower the expectations of what can change. It's a giant abdication of that duty. And what it will mean is that the space to reinvent and reconsider the way that we live our lives is going to be left to much more dangerous forces. And I think history is going to be very harsh on those who didn't have the metal and sat behind and let that happen. You do want to hear more from political voices who do take seriously the intersecting crises which society is facing and don't keep their political commitments confidential. Do make sure you subscribe to Navarro media. If you have not already, we go live three times a week and put out videos every day. We're going to go to our final nugget of information for you tonight, which is new ratings, which has come out on Keir Starmer, his personal ratings. This is from YouGov. And it is asking people how they assess Keir Starmer according to various criteria. And it's not looking particularly good. Trustworthy or untrustworthy. 26% think he's trustworthy. 36% think he's untrustworthy. We certainly do. Maybe they've been watching Navarro media because the guy breaks every single one of his promises. Likeable, dislikeable, also not going well. 24% say he's likable. 39% say he's dislikeable. That's a shift of five in both directions. When it comes to decisiveness, the direction of travel is very worrying for Keir Starmer since March the 22nd. The number of people who think he is decisive has gone down seven percentage points. It's now at 18%. And the people who think he's indecisive has gone up nine percentage points to 48% equally worrying when it comes to strength. 14% of people think he's strong. That's down eight points since 22nd of March. 47% think he's weak, which is up 11. And then finally, and this is the real, I suppose, knockout blow for Keir Starmer, whose whole image was supposed to be based on him being a competent leader. He might not stand for anything, but at least he's competent. Well, not according to the public. So currently 28% of the public say he is competent, which is down seven points from March. 35% say he's incompetent, which is up seven points. Dahlia, this is very, very damning for the man, isn't it? I am starting to think for the first time, well, I've been thinking this for a couple of weeks now, that Keir Starmer probably won't make it until the next general election. How long do you think he's got? Oh, yeah, I think I, to be honest, I think from the beginning of his tenure, I was like, this guy is not going to make it because he just doesn't, he so rapidly lost that base that he made up, especially when he suspended Jeremy Corbyn. I think if he made it to this time next year, I think that would be a good, that would be a good run for him. But where will the leadership challenge come from? That's the question. Angela Reina, deputy leader. She doesn't like the guy and get the support within 12 months, I reckon. That's my betting tip for you there. Let's go to a comment. Andrew Bergman tweets on the hashtag, Tiskey Sauer, how is it possible that Jonathan Ashworth is even more useless at public relations under a leadership that he isn't ideologically opposed to? A harsh but quite entertaining comment there. It is very true. There are so many of these people currently in the Shadow Cabinet who sort of say, oh, yeah, we feel so free now. We really relate to the leader. We can express ourselves. We don't have to pretend we want the leader of the Labour Party to be Prime Minister. They're supposed to be in their element. They go on television. They can't answer a basic question. Maybe they'll start to realise, actually, it wasn't that bad being a front bench Shadow Minister with a leader who actually believed in something because at least you had something to say. At least you had a reason to turn up to the TV studio. Now you might as well just stay at home. You might as well send a cardboard cutout of yourself. It's going to be slightly less awkward than when they ask you, what do you stand for? What's your position on this? And you say, oh, it's confidential. I don't know. All I know is that we're going to look out to the country. We'll work out our position once we've done a focus group in this particular constituency that we're desperate to win back in 2024. I'd prefer to stay at home. Let's put it like that. Darlia, it has been an absolute pleasure speaking to you on this Wednesday evening. It's been wonderful. Thanks for having me. It is always a pleasure and thank you so much for watching Tiskey Sour tonight. It's always a pleasure to be in your company. We will be back on Friday. I forget the days of the week sometimes these days, but we will be back on Friday for now. You've been watching Tiskey Sour on Navarra Media. Good night.


So, just pick up where you left off. And I think Senator Plena said you got up to page 14. Is that what he said. Yes, so that's section four. Okay. So it's page 15 in the as introduced version. Okay, great. Okay, so Becky Wasserman legislative council. So I will continue from section four in H449. Yesterday we went through the changes to the Vermont pension investment committee. Now the commission that changed the membership and the duties of that, that committee. And the next few sections are dealing with current law in statute. That. There are some references to the committee response, the commission's responsibilities in the state employee retirement system board language, the teachers language and the municipal language that had to be changed to sort of update the cross references with respect to the new requirements of the commission and new responsibilities. So I will just highlight that they're going to be very repetitive, but it just had to be changed several times so section four starting with the retirement board for the state employees retirement system. So this is a new requirement that the actuarial the experience study the actuarial investigation will be done at least once in every three year period rather than a five year period. So you'll see this change being made in all three statutory sections. So this first section is three vsa 471. And that's with respect to the state employees retirement board. So this is in line in the as introduced version it's it's line 21 on page 15. Section five is also dealing with the state employees retirement system. And yesterday that this the state employees retirement system language had some language in there to the standards of conduct that would be adopted by the treasurer for VPIC. And that language is now moved in to section. Section two of the bill that VPIC will be adopting their own standards of conduct for for their own commission. So section five is is deleting the references to the treasure adopting those rule standards of conduct for members of VPIC. And then the treasurer will be only doing this for members of the the board of trustees for the state employees retirement system. Are there any questions on that. No, okay. I'm just going to kind of be repeating that those same concepts three two more times so section six is making the change from the five year to the three year period for the actuarial investigation in the teachers retirement system board language. You'll see that on page 17 line 20. And then section seven is still in the teachers system. Again deleting the references to the treasure adopting standards of conduct for the for VPIC. So the treasure would only be doing this. And adopting these rules with respect to the board of trustees for the state retirement teachers retirement system. Section eight of the bill is again in the municipal system. Changing that length of that actuarial investigation from a five year period to a three year period. And then section nine is again just actually this section did not have any references to VPIC standards of conduct but I did change all the references to it being a committee to a commission in this section of law. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, this is not. Well, it's a technical question but has nothing to do with anything else pretty much. I'm sorry, I'm on the line 16. What is an obligor. I'm sorry, I'm not sure we're on the same. Oh, and or of any. It's current law. I'm just, oh yeah. So somebody who has, who has loaned, I think it's somebody who loans money to the, to the board. Okay. Thank you. It's that body to whom you are obligated. Is that what I don't see it. Are you are in any manner and it's current law. It's current law. Forgive me for asking I shouldn't have asked the question. I don't want us to get sidetracked into something that isn't I apologize. I see it's just fine. Okay. Thank you, Becky. Thank you. Section 10 is setting up the task force. The pension benefits design and funding pass force and this is specifically for the state employees retirement system and the state teachers retirement system. Subsection eight a creates this task force and they're looking at reviewing and reporting on the benefits design and funding of retirement and retiree health benefits for the state employees system that teacher system. The membership of the board consists of three members from the house, not from the same political party who are appointed by the speaker of the house. There's three members from the Senate, not all from the same party who are appointed by the committee on committees. The director of the retirement division is on the board from the office of the state treasure. There's the commissioner of financial regulation. Oh, sorry, I saw a question. Can I ask a chair of question. Yes. Um, Becky, in your long experience in legislative council, when we have wanted an array of political parties represented or perspectives, have we done anything different than say, not of the same political party. That is our standard template for, for referencing not of the same different political political parties. Okay, I think because this is such a topic of interest. If there's a way to ask others in Ledge Council, like have we ever worded. We've never seen anything other than that worded but let's this that's a that's not a question of the drafting that's a question of, of the content. So we, a Wednesday conversation. If somebody, if anybody has any other remembrance that we do it in any other way I've never seen it any other way. I would confirm that that is what our template is for committees. That being said, if, if you're trying to get at something specific, we can of course change the language to be more specific to whatever it is, the policy decision that the right. It wants to achieve, but that this is the standard language that I would just like for some kind of historical precedent in Ledge Council in case one exists, it was the drafting kind of question but I'll leave it alone for now. But. So, we're not going to talk about whether they should. There's going to be a conversation about this I can guarantee you, but this is the drafting. This is the way the drafting is done. There will be conversation about whether this is the right policy or not but that's not a question for Becky. Okay. You want to go on. Sure. So I think I got through the commissioners of financial regulation and human resources. There's also three members who will be appointed by the president of the Vermont NEA two members appointed by the president of the VSE a and one member of the Vermont troopers association who's appointed by the president of that association. The members from the house and the Senate, there's a restriction that they shall not be direct or indirect beneficiaries of either system, the state employees or teachers retirement system. And then the members appointed by the NEA, the VSE a and the troopers association. And then sub division to be, they shall not be currently serving as a legislator or the spouse or partner of an individual currently serving as a legislator. And then subdivision C says that if for those members that can point to designee upon designation and approval. These shall be the only representative of the designator to participate in the task force proceeding so essentially you can only appoint one person to take your place throughout the period of time that the task force is meeting. Subsection C. This is where the powers and the duties of the task force are set out. So the task force is making recommendations about benefit provisions and appropriate funding sources along with other recommendations that are it deans are appropriate. They have to be consistent with actuarial and governmental accounting standards as well as demographic and workforce trends and the long term sustainability of the benefit program programs. And so there's a list of some of the things that the committee, the task force needs to consider. First, it will be setting a pension stabilization target number for both the state employees and the teachers retirement system. And that number will be reducing the actuarial accrued liability based on the actuarial value of assets by some that's equivalent to the amount of the increase from fiscal year to fiscal 21 to 22. So this is trying to get out is trying to reduce the amount of that number by the same amount that it increased her the actuarial valuation and review that was reported on June 30 of 2020. And for both, both the state employee and the teachers system. And then same with the ADEC. It's that number should reduce the actuarial determined employer contribution by an amount that's equal to what the amount increase from fiscal year 21 to 22, as reported for both of those systems. I don't remember what that number is off the top of my head but I can get I can look it up and send it to you if the committee would like that. Okay. So the committee, the task force is also looking at a five year review of benefit expenditure levels as well as employer and employee contribution levels and growth rates on a three five and 10 year projection of these levels and rates. And then based on benefit and funding benchmarks. The, it will look at the proposed proposed new benefits structures with the objective of adequate benefits within the established cost containment benchmarks. This would include an evaluation of a shared risk model for employer contributions and cost of living adjustments. It will look at an estimate of the cost of current and any proposed benefit structures on a vegetarian pays you go in full actuarial accrual basis. The committee, sorry, the task force will then evaluate the intermediate and long term economic impacts to the state and local economies and their potential impact on retiree spending. It will evaluate any cross subsidization between groups within the state employees system and a dust contribution amounts to eliminate that any cross subsidization. The task force will evaluate alternative plan design such as hybrid or defined contribution plan options or a combination of defined benefit and defined contribution plans. It will examine permanent and temporary revenue streams to fund both systems and this would include a review of whether all are part of retirement income should be tax exempt. The task force will look at a plan for pre funding OPEB benefits with an evaluate an evaluation of using federal funds to the extent that that might be permitted. And then finally a plan to lower OPEB health care costs, including looking at health benefit design innovation state regulatory methods and alternative methods of providing pooled health care benefits. Sub division to says that the task force is not going to be making recommendations on adjusting this assumed rates of return. Subsection D is stakeholder input. So the task force before they make any recommendations is going to solicit input including through public hearings from affected stakeholders and that includes those impacted by issues at the equities. It will also consult with representatives designated by the Supreme Court group team members of the state employees retirement system and members of the same place system who are employees of DOC. Subsection E is assistance. So the task force has administrative technical and legal assistance from the office of the state treasurer. There's fiscal assistance from the joint fiscal office and committee support services from the office of legislative operations. The task force is appropriated in subdivision to $200,000 to contract for advisory services from an independent benefits expert and legal as expert if necessary. Subsection F would come from general funds. Subsection F leave time. So public employee members of the task force shall be granted reasonable leave time by their employees, players to attend the task force meetings. Subsection G is a reporting requirement by September 1 of this year the task force would submit a written report to the governor and the two government operations committees with findings and recommendations for legislative action. It would also be submitting a copy of this report to the boards of the state employees retirement system and the teacher system for their consideration so they can comment to the legislature. Subsection H in terms of meetings. The six legislative members appointed to the committee will appoint both a house and senate member as co chairs for the committee, and those co chairs would call the first meeting of the task force by June 15 of this year. A majority of the membership shall constitute a quorum. And then the committee would cease to exist by June 30 of 2022. The legislative members in subsection I would be eligible to receive prudium compensation reimbursement of expenses, and that comes from the legislative budget budget. The other members of the task force who are not state employees shall receive reimbursement and compensation, and that comes from money appropriated to the state treasure. And for both of those, that compensation is limited to not more than 15 meetings. Section 11 what is a way for our office to not have to go through all statute right now to make the change from Vermont pension investment committee to commission so this allows ledge council during the stat rev process to to go through all the cross references and statute to clean up that language and replace committee with commission. I see that coming in a new technical bill next year. Detuned. And then section 12 is the effective eight so it takes effect on passage. Any questions for Becky about the drafting of it. That was a nice work. Yeah, work was up. Anyway, we're appreciative. So committee. I have, I went through this and have a number of questions that I think are beyond. There are more why questions, but just for example, if the report is due on September 21, why does the committee continue to the task force continue to exist for another seven months or nine months. I mean just stuff like that that I think is technical it isn't substantive around the policies. It's just so can we have, we have Sarah and john here so those are good time to ask those questions. Yeah that's I was just going to ask committee if that was okay to just ask those kinds of questions I don't want to know why did you choose this policy over this policy, because I think that's something we need to. We need to hear testimony on and dig into ourselves but if it is it okay for us and do other people have those kinds of questions that might be pretty technical but beyond Becky's answer for why something like that was done. Is that okay committee. Yeah. Okay, so Sarah or john do you have a response to that particular one. I'm not sure that I have a strong response to it I guess I would say that we may need members of the task force to continue to participate in conversations. The legislative session starts. Not that they would meet but that we might want to call them to to testify representative Gannon you you may have another thought on why that's there. Madam chair, I represent a couple and I think you're, you're correct. That's why the language is there so if there's a need for them to testify before the legislature they'll have the opportunity to do so. I've seen that language in other summer study, summer study bills. Okay, okay, I just, I'd never seen that before but. Okay, thank you. Yeah, did you have a technical question. I think so. I think it makes total sense that they given that it will be live as an issue, all during next session. It makes total sense that the commit that the group of people who are most who have invested the most in in it, be there, either to meet and resolve with a further recommendation I think it makes sense for them to still exist, because they may have further work to do. Yeah, no I just wondered I just was curious. I would just be curious. With the draft that pressure peers or the kind of proposal treasure peers released as the session started, and then the draft that you all started looking at I believe in March. What were some really important differences to you that had felt, you know, like that was what you wanted to have counter proposals around. Are you are you talking specifically about the, the pension, the benefits package that was presented because we're, we're not going to get into the benefits package. Right, I guess I'm just curious, you know, like this committee does its public process you know was there anything that you felt was was critical about what you put forth in the study. You know that you sort of didn't see originally in the treasures proposal. So you're asking if there's anything that we put in the duties of the task force that was responsive to some of those issues that were identified between the treasures proposal and the House proposal. I guess what I'm getting at is we heard from some folks that it felt prescriptive. So I'm just wondering if you could respond to that how do you think there are ways that that you know you were you do want there to be some prescriptive nature of this discussion and what's important to you about that. Yeah, I mean I think it felt important to us as we were having conversations in committee and also looking at how interim study committees on other topics have, have either succeeded or failed. It felt important to us to to direct to the task force on a couple of issues to focus on and or not focus on in the case of adjusting the rate of return. And so that's why it looks fairly directive because otherwise it is a vast challenge and and it could be difficult to know where to begin. And what what made you sort of feel like the governance change the overall governance changes make a really big difference to what happens moving forward. So the, I think the transparency and the stress testing is very important to us, and we believe will will help make improvements going forward, as well as the creation of spots within the commission that will that will be occupied by independent financial experts, because we know that it's important for beneficiaries of the system to have, you know, a seat at that table with that investment committee, but we also know that, you know that that there are, there are certain skill sets that are resident within people who are financial experts that that you also want to have at that table, so that there can be a dialogue and a full understanding and also we you know frankly a critical I about advice that may be coming from from someone advising the investment committee. So, yeah, Sarah call more. Thank you madam chair. So I'm just looking at the dates again, and I'm sure you guys took a look at what you wanted to lay out in terms of a process. They start on June 15. They have to have a report done by September 1. And if I did my math that leaves them 77 days to come up with a report, and they're limited to 15 meetings. It seems like there's a lot of compression. If they are going to take advantage of the 15 meeting situation, they're going to be meeting quite often on during those 77 days, right. Well, I guess what I'm, what I'm asking is, would it make more sense to make the report do a little later, or was there a specific reason that September 1 was changing. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate the question because this was a source of tension within the committee there were, there were some voices at the table who were saying.  On the other hand, any changes that would require legislation wouldn't be able to be made until January anyway so then, you know then the question becomes well why not, why not give the task force until December to finish its work. The other reality is that we, we would expect that that there will be members of the government operations committee, possibly on both sides who who may need to sit on this task force, and we have another very important once in a decade project coming up this fall which is on the house side a little more intense, because we need to get feedback from the boards of civil authority with respect to redistricting. So we're already going to have as a house committee, a fair number of late fall early winter meetings that we will need to have around the state, hopefully by zoom, but probably also in person. And, and so, you know, it, it became clear that it's going to be a very, very busy November and December. So it became clear and remembering that the census Bureau won't release their data until the end of September. I believe that's true. September 30th I think that was the official announcement. Yes, I think that I heard since then that they think they might be able to beat that timeline. All right. Well, as I said I'm sure you took all this into consideration when you came up with the timelines that was just curious. I'm happy to answer the question. And I have a, I have a couple kind of technical that I would consider technical on the, the visits the VP, not on the task force but on the VP. The, if the chair is, first of all, there's a chair that's appointed by the other members. It's a separate, it's not one of their members it's a separate person that comes on, and then there's a vice chair that is elected by the members. But if the, and there's no qualifications, I don't think for the chair, but if the chair is unable to do their responsibilities. I would point an interim chair who shall be a financial expert or independent, not the vice chair. And I just, I was just curious about that. It seemed like an odd thing that you have a vice chair, but the vice chair doesn't do anything because if the chair can't do it, there has to be an interim. I see, I see the conundrum that you have uncovered and I would welcome representative Gannon to share any thoughts that he might have. I think that that's a good comments, Senator White.  There's a chair, an interim chair appointed and so it can and has to be an independent and financial expert, and the vice chair doesn't isn't required to be a financial expert I think that could be something that could be fixed. But, but so that it isn't the expectation that the vice chair would take over that there would be an interim chair from outside, appointed just as the original chair was appointed from the outside of the board right is that I'm just checking on that. So the vice chair really doesn't do anything. Yeah, I'll give you the page number but just popping in that the language says the members of the commission will appoint the vice chair but in the instance that the chair can't serve. They, they can appoint an interim chair. Sorry. Where are. Where. Sorry, I'm just I'm finding it out just give me one moment. Yeah. So the chair isn't required to have. Okay, it's. Well, as introduced version it's on page six, it's under member terms subdivision to. So member terms are subsection C. Yeah, in section 522. Yeah, and. So, may, may I ask a question? Or are we going to, but there are lots of questions about the chair. You have basically a quite long terms I mean it's very unusual to. I see for a board to go beyond ability to serve up to 10 years. So you have people able to serve for 12. And the chair is able to serve for 20 years. I mean, most people say doing a job for 10 years, and then they should move on. What gave you the notion that somebody could serve up to 20 years. I mean they are pretty worn out after 20 years. I mean, usually as, as leadership is often done and sort of thought about in 10 year chunks. Right. And, and I can certainly let representative again and jump in on this because he's quite familiar with where this came from. So, first of all, under the current big statute, there are no tournaments at all. Right. People serve as long as they want to. As long as they're reappointed. And so we do have at least two members who have served since 2005. The concept with respect to the chair serving 20 years is, first of all, unlike the other members of the pic. The chair is elected by the members of the pic. So, you know, we thought that he could have a longer term than the members themselves. And I will say that this was a recommendation from broke the treasurer and the chair of the pic. Thanks. Sarah. When you were thinking about the independent commission, did you talk with Chris or others about how this compares to governance bodies around the country, do they have advisory boards, you know what, what are some best practices that you think are really important in the bill. And what did you sort of decide it's interesting that we can't make that happen right now. So, there are two models, multiple models of how pension boards are set up. But the model that we follow is having separate pension boards that deal with the administrative issues with the pensions and then have a separate basically investment committee. That is a fairly common model. That's out there that other states follow. I think what we focused on a committee is the importance of the independence of that committee. A balance of all the different stakeholders which is consistent with the research at a Boston College Center for retirement research. So we did look at that. I mean, I think we were just focused primarily in committee on ensuring that there wasn't the VP did not become politicized. And that it was more independent from the Treasurer's office. And we heard testimony from both the treasurer and the chair of VP. That that was very important to them. So I think that that was the driving force for that change. Because it was it was interesting to hear Tom mentioned that that that they were in the process of moving that direction anyway. Yes, they are they have an RFP out for a study that's contemplated in the bill. So they're already moving forward with looking at a new governance structure that would be much more independent from the Treasurer's office. And I really do think it's important because if you look at other states and how they have set rates return, Vermont's not alone in having set its assumed rate return higher than probably was it should have been. And so what we're trying to do is ensure that VP in setting that assumed rate of return is looking at the markets, and at the, you know, independent investment data that's out there to set that return, rather than being concerned about, Oh, if we set the return here, we're down here it's going to impact the ADAC payment. And that's not something we're very concerned about because if you look at the past history of our assumed rate return. We have missed it on a number of occasions and you can look at other states and see the same thing. And you have to wonder if politics enters into the decision of how to set the assumed rate return, because it lowers budgetary pressure, because you reduce the amount of the ADAC in a given year. It hits you in the back end because in the next year, your unfunded liability goes up if you don't make your assumed rate of return. So, I have just a really did that I'm sorry did that answer your question center. Is that my question. Well, it was you had asked a question about. Okay, so I have a question. This is really picky. This is really picky. I wonder sections, you've always talked about an independent VPEC, but in section three, where it calls it a standalone entity instead of, is there a difference between an independent entity and a standalone entity. Sorry, where are you, Jeanette. Well I'm on section three. Page for. Well, I think I'm looking at a different page than you are. So just forward to section three. Okay, I'm trying because I'm looking at the draft before, because I printed that out and it's on page 13 on my draft. Page 14. Okay. And I just wondered, I know that's really, really picky. But I just wondered if there is a difference here. You know what VPEC and the Treasurer's Officer are working through right now is in a memorandum of understanding that would make the pick more of a standalone entity with its own employees that aren't in the Treasurer's Office. So Tom Goloka referenced that there were three employees that work for, for VPEC Eric Henry who's the Chief Investment Officer, and two others. I think they would move into VPEC as a standalone organization. And I think you should talk to Tom Goloka about that. Next week. I can't hear you Madam Chair. Sorry. I promise you can't hear me because I was on mute. And I'm in mute because I've got a lot of noise out here. But so about, we'll talk about whether, why the two different terms. Okay. Any other questions right now. Yeah, Senator Rom. Talk to other members of the, of the current former VPEC, or do you feel like they really spoke with one voice through Tom. Tom presented our, our governance structure to the VPEC board, and they voted unanimously to accept it with a couple of exceptions. They did not discuss or vote on term limits. And one other, oh, whether a legislator should be on VPEC or not. They did not vote on those two issues, but they voted on the rest of the governor's structure. They made some recommendations for modifications that were in a memo that you can find on our page. And we made those changes in this draft of the bill, or I should say this bill. And those two issues are policy issues. Right. The term limits. Whether there should be term limits or not. Right. Senator Clarkson, did you start to say something? No, I just, I just wanted to clarify, did they not vote on those because they disagreed or they felt that they were going to leave them to us to make those decisions. I think those, given that a current member of the legislature sits on VPEC. I think that was a controversial issue. I think also with respect to term limits, given the fact that there are a couple of members of VPEC who have been there since 2005 was, was why they avoided taking a stand on term limits. Yeah, thank you. You had mentioned that. Term limits are so standard now. Any other. They are, I just hope they don't get imposed on the legislature because that's a really. I think dangerous. No, I've seen it in Maine and I've seen how it is just a shell game. But anyway. No, I'm sure we'll have more once we. Oh, yeah. Oh, I know we'll have more but I, I wanted us to talk not about the policy questions here. But just about if we had technical kind of questions for that. Well, I have a technical question just given the timing and how we're going to make this all happen and how, because you don't actually call out three employees and you don't actually fund them in this bill. So, I mean, I, this is, that's, this is really granular but one that has to be done. If we're going to proceed with it and if it's going to make its way either through the budget or as an independent bill, however, so I take it that that is work that we could do to add on and flush it out a little bit further. I didn't understand your question at all. Call out three employees. This bill implies that the, that there'll be three employees that will be part of this. I mean, they're currently, I guess was your thought that they were already paid for and they were already in the budget and they would just be moving. Okay. And there's a report back to the legislature on January 15, 2022 with respect to their recommendations with respect to their change into a standalone independent commission, which is when we could tackle the issue of we funded this, but I will say that the pick in some of the treasurer's office functions have been funded through the retirement plans. I mean, their costs are, are borne by their retirement plans. So, as they move to an independent office. Okay, well, we can chat about that, I guess. Tom DeLocker can provide you with information on that and what other states have done and Chris Roop can can provide that information to, for example, two states that have similar models are Massachusetts in Wisconsin. Anything else this afternoon that we should look at so I, I would suggest that if you have on either the on either section. And again, we're, I'm going to try to be very. Very sorry I've been trying to keep myself unmuted but then there was a lot of noise here so I'm going to try to be very careful about keeping the two, the two main themes here divided so that we don't start wandering around in both of them because I think, because I think they're two distinct areas here to deal with one is governance and one is the task force. So as you go through this and I know you're going to spend all weekend reading this and trying to figure it out and angsting about it so as you go through it though, and come up with any questions like I have a list of questions. I think to have you send them to me so that we can get them posted so that when Steve and Jeff, and the treasure and who I've tried to suggest that we have come in. So we have many pieces of paper on Tuesday, on Tuesday. So we look at the governance issue and we have Tom go like the treasure on galanka the treasure, the people that are going to the, you, the three unions, the the CT because the members is going to be part of the VPEC. The people that are involved. The Treasurer's Office that have them come in but if they can have some sense ahead of time of what some of our policy questions will be that will be wrestling with. I think that would be helpful to them so that they can look at those questions. I don't know if that makes sense to anybody else or not but if I were coming in to testify, I would, and I were Jeff Ganon, Jeff Fannin, as opposed to john Ganon. I would like to be able to know what some of the concerns were beforehand, not, and Senator Clarkson, we're not going to limit it to those, but just give them a sense ahead of time, if we can. I don't know if that makes any sense to anybody else. So if nobody else wants to send questions to me that's fine I'll just post mine. We'll work on it you've given us homework will work. We'll get and when do you want them to you buy 530 today. Do we have a study hall now do you promise the phone won't ring. I can do 530 if they're going to. No, just sometime and, and then if they don't get. If you don't get them to me that's fine you can ask them when we're just sometimes just sometime doesn't work, give us a gift do you want them by Sunday night do you want at lunch. We're meeting Tuesday afternoon I'd like them by Monday afternoon. Okay. Right. Does that work. I'm going to ask you governance questions to you by Monday afternoon and benefit the task works questions by Tuesday. Okay. Perfect. Anything else. All right. Thank you. Thanks for spending Friday afternoon with us.