rale is low that would have been treated like this by a post given the efforts that we have made to improve our situation so for instance two years ago we got a grant art report said that we needed 17 million to secure the network post master's have worked hard we've taken on new services like bank violence like we're the community bank like new custom services because of brexit and stuff like that and that's 17 million has been significantly reduced but haven't said that on posts still find difficulty in dealing with what we see are small issues much to our annoyance and frustration the latest one is there's new rules money-launching rules in relation to foreign exchange and postal orders or postal money orders people would know them as where you have to fill out a form for any size of a transaction yeah now this is and i mean i think most of us understand the language but what's happening and what people are feeling on the ground is they're trying to change 80 euro into sterling and i have to fill out forms are a five euro postal order you have to fill up a form give your address and your date about and in fairness to people great and like i personally take exception to a number of people who ask if your date about and i give people a fictitious date about i give them the first of the first two thousand and what we're doing is we're being asked to ask people to fill in their date about five euro money order is this to do with laundering is it to do with laundering does the same happen in the banks it does but see because we deal with the public mostly in banks it's they're known customers and the banks have got out of foreign exchange so we're the main foreign exchange dealer in the country at the moment so if you want 20 quid sterling to go to do something in the north you have to fill up a form and give your date about and we just think that it's bureaucracy why is it why is it not a set it some figure like 500 or a thousand or that's our point that's our point i mean you'd be a long time laundering the proceeds of of crying changing 20 euro through your post office every every five minutes i know it's ridiculous and we've had that discussion and post and post explained to us that it's a law it's coming from bosses it's legal requirement and if that's the case that's fine but then they expect us to do it for nothing we are trans we are paid by transactions so we're expected to suck this up and deal with it and take the abuse from customers like we have respected people who buy posters who are telling us to buzz off that they're not giving us their date about so like we're faced with that or we're discouraging people who are coming into post office or we put down fictitious information so the information the whole purpose of the exercise becomes ridiculous yeah and listen that that affects the public and i can understand why that's pushed to the fore because you know it's going to help in in the public feeling sympathy for postmasters and i don't mean that in any way you know if i were advising that's exactly what i'd advise as well to try and process it but there's other things as well additional pay for 2021 christmas payments withheld why would that be withheld for example well the only reason we we know we we got an additional rate we pay double payments for social welfare or Christmas and in 2019 and 2020 we got an extra a few pence pence is what we got but it wasn't becoming available in 2021 and the only reason we can see is that on post bottom line is under pressure and they're trying to cut costs whatever way they can and i think it's linked back to the to the fact that the network needs investment from the government if that network hasn't or that investment hasn't been for common on post is squeezed financially so their bottom line their friend is trying to save every cent and they're squeezing it out of us like postmasters generate 85 percent of post office transactions throughout the country and it is our view not confirmed by unposts but it is our view that is pressure on their bottom line that is causing them to to to waste for want of a better word on small amounts of money and like all the issues that we have are small greg and like it's it's just the frustration that why just don't do it it's not a big issue and they did it in in relation to the christmas family it was done in 2020 2019 and 2020 it was held in 2021 and we just don't understand that other than it's pressure on the bottom line and if that's the case the government should invest and back to a point i made at the start two years ago i'm told and estimated that it was 17 million investment was required in the network we believed that's reduced considerably so let me read this if i'm reading the the language correctly are you suggesting that unposts are using postmasters as pawns to leverage against the government i i don't know i don't know i mean they recorded 33 million euro profit in in 2020 now and although though there was i'm not sure what the position is in 2021 our understanding is that there wasn't the profit made in 2021 certainly 20 that and in fairness the pandemic cost with everything that's going on i just don't understand why why squeeze on the postmasters you know i presume this other area of businesses that they you know that they could come back on i mean is there is there another motivation here because this is reneging on on a commitment is quite significant for a company of this size to not be following through on on on contractual commitments well i can't other than we're deducing it's adding to our frustrations and that's why we're calling the meeting like we're not we're not in nature we want to provide services to people we have worked hard to provide services we have we're we're trying to portray and we are portraying a more positive image we are providing services we have we are becoming the community bank in relation to doing bank of iron services we do aib we do even though also or even we're doing also we want to do more of that stuff and we can do stuff from that that for the government we can do identity verification we can do password verification all of that stuff the government is or promise us this time last report on services by the post office hasn't appeared great so i don't know can you cost this in other words for um for on pass to to meet the the the basic five demands uh to avoid this and and maybe they'll be compromising if discussions happen but how much money would you say we are talking for them to satisfy the concerns of postmasters across the country it's it's i haven't funny enough i haven't done that some but it'll be less than a million well okay it's not it's not much money in the context of an 800 million organization or 900 plus million in 2020 but i presume that's going to fall back and this is this is the frustrating part for us like we are contractors we're agents we generate 84 or 85 percent of their revenues through the post office network to the contractor contractors part of the post office level we are not the enemy here their way to make money is for us to do more business because we only get paid if we do business and if we do business they do business it just baffles us and like frustrating frustration isn't the correct word for it and like that's that's why we finish the call in the meeting next week right now what does industrial action look like by the way finally what does industrial action look like now do you want a verdict but i don't know it would look like it won't involve soldiers because we're too important to so many people in a relationship with service people like if maybe we're through all of some services i don't know we'll be guided by the members Greg but we don't want you'll want to put the squeeze and on pass rather than your customers i presume in any case whatever you decide okay yeah right Ned okay thanks for your time this morning appreciate it now are Ned O'Hara their general secretary to the Irish postmaster's union oh wait six that explains when you're going in and you're almost asking you're inside leg measurement it's coming from Brussels via the network but i mean 80 who's laundering 80 euro i don't know all right a call says there are thousands of vacant holiday homes in Donegal why not utilize them to house refugees and re-vigorate rural areas like Fallon who've suffered the population over the years well that's people's investments we heard earlier on people going well the census is being used as a means for agenda 2030 to take people's homes off them that's your that that suggestion is similar to that these are people's properties do we want to go down that route where people maybe don't trust banks maybe don't trust pension funds and they've worked their you know what's off and they've invested it in a holiday home it might be the retirement home are we really going to go in and take their homes off them and give them to other people maybe it could be incentivized and invite them to do so but are you suggesting that we we do it by not by fours you know but i don't know is that it's not the route we want to go down okay we still planning to come by the way another 33 minutes of the nine till noon show for this Tuesday tell us on a positive note what do you want to do with this weather what are you doing what's it enabling you to do are you enjoying this bit of good weather it's giving you a pep in your step is there anything that you've you know are you are you even dare i say dusting off the barbecue taking out of the shed and realizing that someone didn't put it away correctly all the metal is covered in cake in grease there's food at the bottom of it it's pitting and rusty and all because you told him or her to put it away correctly and they didn't there any stories like that is that a reality in your home if you're lucky enough to to have a barbecue all right back after this break with more the nine till noon show with letter kenny credit union now offering mortgages with life cover provided at no additional cost letter kenny credit union 9102127 michael murphy sports and leisure has everything you need to gear up for the j a season this year get your hands in the brand new dunigall j home jersey available in men's ladies and kids or gear up the whole family for pre-season and match days with the new harlem range of sweaters leggings and snoods at michael murphy sports dot are you troubled with painful varicose veins restore your confidence with vein treatment at kingsbridge private hospital letter kenny our vascular consultants offer assessment advice and options in the latest treatments available so why wait say goodbye to varicose veins and hello to healthy legs with appointments available why not book your consultation today visit kingsbridge private hospital dot i to find out more because life matters already for next year why not make sure of it with seat trade up to a 2 to 1 seat suv and you'll be offered pcp finance from 1.9 percent and a three-year service plan for just 999 a month with the bold new arona the stylish new atteka or the outstanding seven-seater terraco we're already are you trade up to your 2 to 1 seat suv at dmg motors claw road dunigall town finance provided by way of her purchase agreement from volkswagen financial services arland trading a set financial services subject to lending criteria terms and conditions apply visit seat dot i slash 2 to 1 for further information looking for a flexible affordable home improvement loan from your kitchen renovation to getting your garden barbecue ready bns credit union's renovate loan is ready to go for loans from 5000 to 70 000 euro visit their website at bnscu dot i or free phone 1800 290 390 whether dedicated and experienced loans team will be delighted to help you loans are subject to approval terms and conditions apply bns credit union limited is regulated by the central bank of arland alice doil is national chair of farm family committee with the irish farmers association and joins us now alice good morning to you how are you a respended scene behind you but the cows aren't moving so i'm gonna edge my bets and say that's a picture that's my farm earlier in the year down here in the southeast so hopefully it's a sunny morning and the sky is similar to what it is today the grass might be quite as flush but other than that doing good good stuff now um there's a lot to get your head around isn't there with the the fair deal scheme it's complex it's complicated maybe even more so uh for farming families yes it is going um it's a it's a well-known scheme by lots of people have been using it and farmers as well as business people and people outside those both areas have been using it for quite a number of years but for farmers in particular there has been a number of changes made in the last year or so in july and october last year 2021 and a new development came in where the scheme the nursing home scheme had an amendment brought in which put a three-year cap on the payments for farmers if they make certain criteria now that applied to most people who own houses etc outside farming for many years but until last year farmers were allowed to pay seven and a half percent each year of the value of their farm or their assets ongoing with no cap but fortunately the minister brought in an amendment to mary butter on the 21st of october last year and this has had a significant impact on the amount of money that people would have to pay back and i think it's quite it it's quite obvious why a cap needed to be put in there particularly with farms the role in the family and and how the past through generations for those reasons alone um do you accept the ifa the 7.5 percent uh max of a the value of a farm business assets each year capped at three years is that the best deal that could have been achieved is that fair well at the moment yes we have been spent we spent a lot of time we spent nearly nine years negotiating that to get that so it it may sound like an awful lot to still have to pay and it is and nobody is denying that that it is a huge amount still to have to pay but it is certainly better than having to pay seven and a half percent ongoing with no cap on it but certainly we'd love it to be less but it is seven and a half percent we have to accept that um and we accept it sorry pardon my ignorance Alice is it up to seven and a half percent because obviously farms of different size uh you know um would would be worth different amounts of money seven point five the maximum yes seven point five it is seven point five the amount of what size of your farm so whether you have a farm worth three hundred thousand or a farm worth eight hundred thousand it's seven half percent of the value of that so the higher the value of your farm the seven half percent of that is higher value it's higher percentage it's a higher amount anyway it's still seven and a half percent but that's a higher amount and how is that uh how is that taken from because some of it's going to be assets presumably you know not necessarily cash how is that leveraged against uh the value of of the farm okay okay and if you are in the new view avail of the amendment what happens is in that situation in order to avail of the three-year cap what happens is the farmer that was we take it that it's the farmer is going into the nursing home it could be his wife either but we take it's the farmer in this case so if the farmer is going wants to avail of the fair deal scheme the first thing he has to do is he has to nominate a successor because um this is a very very important part of the new arrangement so a successor must be nominated that successor can be son daughter son-in-law daughter-in-law but um or Lisa can't go outside that you cannot go farther out than that and they must be nominated to take over the farm that person must agree to farm the farm for a six a minimum of six years and the also they must agree to pay seven and a half percent of the value of the farm for the first three years the person being in the nursing home i'm not looking for to be particularly negatives but is there any concerns that farmers or farm families could be exploited through this process in what sense Greg in in in the sense of maybe you know being coerced into signing the farm to somebody else or um things like that there i mean i know there are protections and and uh what i'm i'm just wondering if if it sounds like something that someone might feel pressured into going into um say for instance a nursing home by a member of the family or something yeah there is always that worry of course but whether it's a farmer or somebody with just a house yeah and you do the same pressures of course you know the need for a nursing home you'll have to fund it you don't have to fund it and and you do have to try you may have to look after the person it may be the only way so yes there are i suppose there's always that good worry there that people feel coerced into doing it but they they do it voluntarily in the sense that they have to sign it and as you say it's across the board it's not unique it's not unique to it it's just the fact that it's also a family business it's maybe slightly different than than a property but listen as i say i'm not trying to amplify any negatives here Alice and i guess too the fact that it's a family business is a lot of consideration goes into it before that that farmer side people don't do it rush it you know in rush way and we would be advising for my name very much so to anyone who's considering the availing of this scheme to take a lot of illegal advice to take a lot of financial advice don't sign the form the seven is put in front of you you know something you realize well my mother my father needs to be in a nursing home in a hurry because they've had a bad stroke maybe i can't be don't feel that you have to sign that form immediately so we would strongly advise okay right so the webinar is on Tuesday the 22nd of March at 8 p.m which is today you can register online at the ifa website it's one of those things knowledge is power and even if it's not on your horizon immediately i think it would be worth logging on to hear what what's what because this as i say it is it's it's complex and you have experts on hand to describe to discuss this we would very much urge people to log on tonight it's very easy to log on because we will have the experts from the hsc and also Heinz who was the an expert in this area and will be on tonight and he would be there to give it a and understand you how all this happens and you will also take questions so we urge you to join us tonight at HVAP and you can log in through the ifa website or you can contact the country plural in Donnie Gold who is Tom void and Tom has given me permission to give you this number which is<PHONE_NUMBER> and Tom will give you a link to us as well Alice thank you very much indeed we really appreciate your time this morning that was Alice Doyle national chair of farm family committed with the ifa as I say if you're interested in that go on to the ifa's website that webinar tonight march 22nd at 8 p.m okay now we're joined on the program by John Dean O'Keefe criminologist and lecturer of law and forensic psychology you good morning to you John thank you very much for taking the time to speak to us today uh John can you hear me okay right okay we'll come back in a moment to that in the meantime I'll read uh just a few of your comments here all health care workers say this call should be covered by law against assault whether it's in a hospital setting or outside their work another reality is now the last nation in Europe to remain neutral in the face of Russian aggression well we're not politically neutral certainly military but not politically while other neutral nations like Finland have joined the fray cowardly despicable hypocritical island is rattling collection boxes and sending uh really ready-made meals the fighting Irish don't make me laugh the only fight the Irish put up is when last orders are called at the bar I think that's a terrible assessment of uh also as a nation uh right John Dean O'Keefe John Dean good morning to you thanks for joining us good morning as I mentioned uh it's John Dean uh or John or John and then Dean O'Keefe Dean O'Keefe sir name okay I like John I like John Dean it's very we could have worked with that but John it is okay as I mentioned just in a preamble there you are a criminologist and a lecturer of law and uh forensic psychology um now Vladimir Putin is uh going to be discussed at LYT's uh psychopathy uh psychopathy lecturer uh which you're involved with what's your assessment of uh of Putin and his actions can we tell from afar you know it's it's going to be pretty difficult to tell from afar I mean there's a huge there's a huge temptation of course to describe him as well I don't know mad bad or sad or perhaps a mixture of all three but look making any sort of clinical assessment or even quasi clinical assessment from this distance is farcical I mean there are some things we can say about him I suppose um it's hard to come to a formal conclusion about his mental state but um you know we could look at it one way and we could assess if he were suffering from a true psychiatric illness so for example schizophrenia or paranoid schizophrenia and I think that's highly unlikely you know those listeners who are unfortunate enough to know somebody with that particular illness will know it just simply doesn't manifest in that way those unfortunate people make bad choices for everybody else but also for themselves which Putin doesn't appear to be doing so I think we can rule what we might call a true mental health illness heavy quotes out which brings us to another area of course which is that of personality disorders and is really uh if I can put it this way a happier space to consider him in personality disorders are where we have difficulty extreme difficulty living with ourselves and others and this is in the extreme about 14 percent of any given population or assess to be suffering from it although obviously mostly undiagnosed and there's one particular cluster of personality disorders emotional emotional and impulsive which he's often thrown into for his actions in other words the dark triad of behaviors of narcissism malignant narcissism as is called and psychopathy which is what we'll be talking about tomorrow night I think it's probably a bit easy and a bit tried to just call him a psychopath as well a because we just simply don't know and certainly he appears to have psychopathic traits but then again there are others he appears not to have one of them being uh impulsivity we can see it on one level but actually it appears as if a lot of his actions are thought through so I think it would be difficult to ascribe him that I think probably where we're closer to is what's called malignant narcissism which if you like is a cousin of psychopathy to put it simply and is the kind of my wadi version if I could call it that it's somewhat diluted there will be elements of genuine remorse occasionally in that person's life he could certainly be falling into that type but can someone who is completely on an even kill and sane instruct an army to effectively kill 44,000 people uh in a city in Ukraine I mean can a truly sane person do something like that well the sad truth is absolutely um so if we put aside for a minute personality disorders mental health illness in in total what we can have is heavy quotes a normal person who is the product of their social environmental and family backgrounds I mean we don't we don't need to go into his history now it's pretty well known amongst most of us but of course he was he had a very very sort of strange upbringing with his his mother and father and there's real dispute about whether the mother and father who claimed who he claims to be his mother and father were in fact his mother and father two older brothers both who died before him in childhood a very strange upbringing based on um his father you know talking a lot he worked for Lenin and for Stalin as their cook kind of a strange upbringing based on the sort of uber masculinity of the soviet union um and of course he was then I mean to cut a very long story short he was then head soon to be head of the old kgb liaising with the stasi in eastern Germany and then subsequently head of the fsb which is the new version of the kgb in the russian federation so what we have to do is look at those look at that background and what formed him and indeed the russian nation and then look at perhaps a couple of really interesting headings the first is which is what all humans have a desire for is cognitive closure to feel the need you know for the assurance for our future that there's going to be a beginning middle and an end now of course humanity is a spectrum for you or I it might simply be gotta hope have a nice lunch today you know that was a decent show and you know it might be quite simple stuff but for others it can be expanding the russian empire you know it can be bringing back the good old days as they would see it so we all look for that and what does we get cognitive closure by black and white thinking like no other which of course is what he's doing so everybody's against russia the russian federation at the moment they're all against him and this almost creates the perfect in and out group for him you know the middle football club chant no one likes us we don't care it would be almost better if the world was divided on their response to him you might say because then he would have to assess that nuance position but now it's easy it feeds into all the black and white strategy he has closure and more importantly everyone else is wrong sorry everybody else is wrong everyone is wrong and it's much easier if you don't have to nuance everything that's okay and of course he can't nuance it could then he'll be completely wrong yeah his whole life will have been a lie and and the lives of his people will have been a lie so he creates this terrible out group and of course he's looking for another thing personal significance you know and again it's a prize like no other we all want it some of us want to be a footnote in history some of us want to be a footnote of a footnote this is where this is his state might be questionable because if he is you know of able to make if he's not a psychopath or whatever right he surely must see that he cannot rebuild the USSR because the world has changed and that would require engagement with NATO and then that would lead to you know third world war nuclear winters and and millions of death so he can never recreate the USSR within the world as it is so he must be looking at a bigger picture or he must not be following control of himself well I mean we can say he'll never create the USSR but he thinks something different we need to walk in his shoes not the western shoes we need to walk in those Russian shoes that he's been plodding in for almost 70 years now and by the way there's a lot of evidence to suggest he could be right you know he does what he wants in Syria nobody interferes chemical weapons are used biological weapons are used nobody interferes he then invades the Crimean Peninsula nobody interferes eastern Ukraine he takes over nobody interferes and now suddenly we're interfering but guess what we're not actually interfering so we are neighbors oh well we are I mean I'm not saying that's not a political necessity I'm not suggesting I'm not suggesting I'm just saying we are caught between a rock and hard place if we think he's caught between a rock and hard place it's nothing compared to the rest of us because we have given out this mixed message of weakness and quasi strength which is exactly so you've got to get into his mind as far as he's concerned he is getting back to Soviet Union and he only has to now move on to Latvia Estonia and the other Baltic states and everything would be hunky-dory and are the West going to press the button no they're probably not going to press the button so what he's doing is this madman theory you know if I behave mad enough people will actually think it there's an element of that I think going on that's not to say he doesn't have personality it's of course we have to assume there are some there yeah but whether he's the madman that he's portrayed as I'm really doubtful really don't well let's can we look at someone like Boris Johnson I'd be interested in your in your assessment of him and I'm not in it now Boris Johnson got into trouble for talking about the Ukraine resistance being the same as the Brexit resistance he didn't actually quite say that and I was really quite disappointed in the BBC how they reported it because I believe his comments were misrepresented but listen he's got a history be that as it may I'm not comparing him to Vladimir Putin but in terms of you know in the face of all types of criticism sticking it out as it relates to the Downing Street parties pushing Brexit through and still maintaining that's a good thing even though you know that the consequences have been really quite poor for his country what personality traits do you think Boris Johnson possesses and well look I'm not I'm not so entirely sure that Boris Johnson is that different from Putin I just didn't want to say it I just didn't want to say it's okay I'm not I'm not convinced at all in fact I'm more convinced he is like him now is Boris Johnson going to go to war in the way or any way that Putin has absolutely not but just park that for the moment there's reasons for that I would suggest but he's evidencing all the traits of Putin which is a remorseless disregard for others and the only satisfaction is in the self now I'm talking about a lack of remorse and a lack of empathy that is 100% now that doesn't mean of course that some of the times you won't engage in shallow emotions and look as if you care and Boris Johnson tries the lower wobbly lips sometimes it doesn't work very well he's not very good at it because he really doesn't care I mean that's very obvious he doesn't care he wouldn't be so different from a lot of politicians to be quite honest not all of them but a lot of them and our entire can be entirely self-serving from a personality perspective the difference of course is is Boris Johnson's interests are he not going to war you know he was brought up in a different environment where you know democracy almost has a military ring about it whereas Putin is brought up in an environment where military means military so it's very normal in Russia to go to war it's very normal to be hero worshiping to talk about valor to take your shirt off to sit on a horse and look like as we might say in Ireland and Egypt if not a half Egypt but that's not the way you interpret it when you're sitting in the Russian Federation so Boris Johnson may not press any buttons he may not go to war he in fact he almost certainly won't but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a very similar personality to type to to Putin and indeed many other leaders over the years. Is cognitive closure a new thing not or are we more aware of it now like I'm thinking of an awful lot that's happened over the last few years be it elections in the United States I'm not sure if this falls into the that same bracket but you know the divisions in society people's reaction to COVID something people being so passionate about mask wearing or whatever it might be is is that all in the space of cognitive closure? Yeah I would say it is look I think since time immemorial humans have tried to get closure it might be just running around with a club in your hand seeing if you could kill a deer you know might be as unsophisticated as that but guess what when you can eat that's the long day closing that's okay that's a good day of course things are much more sophisticated now but are they it's really the same principle of course like everything else in psychology we can stop talking about it and we do love a good label so everything gets labeled and I can be criticized for that here today but cognitive closure is important we all need a beginning a middle and an end we look for chakras that close out in our lives every day we look for resolution and guess what black and white thinking plays into that good and evil in-group out-group Satan God same sinners order chaos on it goes it's really simple and and of course Boris Johnson you mentioned him earlier is falling into that exact same pattern of course which is that Putin is evil and we are good and Putin is saying no I am good and you are evil and on it goes but regardless the cognitive closure is something we all look for what we don't like or shades of gray because frankly that's a bit boring and requires us to think okay bad men in good jobs personality disorders psychopathic and putin it's the LIT law society hosting this on Wednesday the 23rd of March tomorrow it's at 6 p.m in room 1101 for a talk with the person we're speaking to now leading criminal criminologist and lecturer in forensic psychology John Dean O'Keefe John Kenny in a couple of minutes tell us more about this roller coaster journey that you can take us on well it'd be but it's just a snippet here but what we're going to do is tomorrow evening try and look at Putin's life look at things that happen them in his childhood in his middle life and his later life and see if we can get a framework within which we can begin to potentially understand Putin and people like Putin the Hitler's the Franco's the Mussolini's and and then you go back as far as you want you go forward as far as you want of course really one of the conclusions and it's not a spoiler alert here is that guess what humanity is a spectrum and we all sit on this spectrum and some of us are incredibly good whatever that means and some of us are incredibly bad and people like you and I probably have the Goldilocks syndrome you know we're hanging around the middle we're not too good we're not too bad you can have a laugh with us but we can get angry and we're going to explore all of that tomorrow brilliant stuff I think it's going to be fascinating I've heard fantastic things about your previous work so I'm sure that's going to be excellent too thank you so very much indeed that was John Dean O'Keefe criminologist and lecturer of law and forensic psychology the 90 noon show with letter Kenny credit union now offering mortgages from 40 000 to 600 000 euro with no hidden fees or transaction charges letter Kenny credit union 9102127 buying or moving home can be a strange mixture of excitement and stress so the last thing you need is worrying about conveyancing time to call McElhinney and associates they'll move that property transaction along swiftly make sure everything's in order and prevent any nasty surprises residential commercial leasing or voluntary transfer call today on<PHONE_NUMBER> or find us online we'll do the paperwork you do the wallpaper McElhinney and associates solicitors turn order how can we help the euro millions jackpot is a guaranteed 17 million euro clear responsibly in store in app or at lottery dot i the national lottery it could be you at smith stale site we have been milling since 1865 covering the northwest and west of ireland for all your animal feed and nutritional needs call smith stale site on<PHONE_NUMBER> island radio wants to send you on the holiday of a lifetime worth 10 000 euro plus five grand spending money get your ticket now at hyranradio.com answer the question and start packing start packing draw takes place April 14th on the nine toning show start planning your ultimate getaway only on hyran radio remember a loved one with a personalized memorial acknowledgement or wallet card from bizprint using your choice of wording and background call in and speak to katharine and bizprint port road letter kenny or call 9117995 island radio weather updates with ireland west airport get ready to hit the beach and soak up the sun by choosing flights to alicante barcelona farrow mayorka malaga and melanne this summer with ryan air ireland west airport you're flying okay so today you're gonna see lots of sunshine just the odd isolated shower but i've cleared at this point now anyway uh highest temperatures 15 to 17 degree moderate to fresh southeasterly winds will ease later mainly dry with clear spells and missed patches tonight lowest temperatures generally three or four degrees dipping close to freezing locally inland with a touch of grass frost in light southeasterly breezes wednesday will be mainly dry and sunny highest temperatures of 13 to 17 degrees in mostly light south westerly breezes so tomorrow looking nice as well thoughts with the very busy people who serve as lawnmowers and streamers because as soon as we've seen a bit of sundown you know straight out of the shed straight down saying can you have it ready by the weekend rather than us getting it done at the end of last season or over christmas i would say it happens every year all right was bosh insane or was england when they went to war i think um from from that conversation it takes a certain type of person to make those decisions to justify those decisions and there is certainly a crossover i don't think anyone suggesting not anyone i don't think our last guest was suggesting otherwise the only two nuclear bombs dropped on the world were by america would he say truman was a mad man again i think what he would say and i don't want to put words in his mouth but given his answers to other questions i asked they would be operating in the same brain space just want to let you know that this week on highland radio dot com we're highlighting neurodiversity celebration week it runs until the 28th uh patrick scharkey speaks to different neurodivergent people from throughout donnie gall and further afield about the challenges they have overcome in daily life the guests span from all four corners of donnie gall telling many different stories dealing with adhd autism dyspraxia dyslexia and asperger's syndrome daily podcasts will be available on highland radio dot com each day at 11 a.m through to friday and just a word on that there's more content available for you to listen back on our website brendan devaney's dl debate it's available for you uh on mondays we've got a business podcast for you on wednesdays with kiran the score with oshin kelly uh on a thursday we've got special documentaries upcoming for you as well which you'll be able to watch sorry you'll be able to podcast on our website as well it's in the on-demand section go in there have a scroll and uh you can enjoy the content when it suits you so we're scheduled here for you but we're also available for you as the title of that page on the website would suggest on demand and all the while we're going to be layering up content for you and engaging with you in all different ways but my engagement for today with you has come


I am going to be coming home at 2 a.m. like this What is good Marvel squad welcome back to our channel We got to kind of talk quiet because we are currently in a like doctors office an office. Yes of some sort So you guys already ran I'm signing my life away right now because what am I doing? So today those to getting a facial at the run as long as And medical group you guys have not checked them out guys. I'm gonna pop up their Instagram here I'm gonna show them a ghost man because we're gonna give a shout out to 10 people who go follow them right now guys Literally today Mariah has talked me and they talk me into doing a facial I know my boys are like dude why are doing a facial trust me I feel like when you see this process you're gonna go crazy, and we also want to show you they have this one thing It's a machine that you put on your abs, and it's like you're doing 30,000 abs in like 30 minutes Which is gonna crazy so I want to show you guys that too because like it's like working out for 30 minutes and like getting We'll show you but like stay tuned just having a big thumbs up, and let's get out. Let's go Like I was built in pictures taken. He's in my position now Where he's getting his stuff done. Can't we see the before and afters? I'm really excited. Are you ready for your lip filler? No The reality of it all is you're getting with you're not getting a facial. I am you're good lip filler. No The bill is getting up. What is that called hydrofacial?  All right guys, so I'm fully cleansed wait. That was the first cleanser That was too cleanses too cleanses and out of the machine. It's gonna Mary Mary come into run a stop doing and come to Mary It all looks like you're relaxed. No way. I'm fully relaxed. I'm just living it up. So what are we doing now? What is this? So this is the deep cleanse with the machine.  Yeah, this is gonna deeply cleanse the skin Helps to soften the surface for the next step. The next step would be kind of like a peeling step That's awesome. I never knew this these type of things existed. It's not a painful experience. No, it doesn't look painful It just looks relaxing Guess who's gonna probably coming in next to get that done So it looks relaxing and awesome and if you guys seriously guys come check out my sons rejuvenating medicine They are awesome. They literally do so many things other than like lip injections like as you can see feels getting a facial We're doing that ab machine thing. So it's awesome here Let's see how your face is looking right now. It already looks so soft and smooth So guys get ready for the end of this because apparently there's a collection tank Where all of the stuff that came off my face goes to and I'm gonna expose him right now He does not wash his face or do any like Washes, you know, you don't do you putting water on But literally we're gonna see we're gonna put it to test see how much All right guys It actually looks so feel Wow, it's very smooth Because I feel like my hands are not dirtier than my face. He had his face is so soft and looks so You don't even really have blackheads. Yeah, I know it's insane anymore or not. Yeah, they would have formed Wow, that is awesome. Now. We're about to look at all his dead skin cells out of this Oh You guys can wait so but there's so much like Particles Oh my gosh Okay, I have to say this if you guys are young and don't really know much about you have to do a show So good for your skin. We didn't normalize this for you. Yes, literally The gun key that's in there All right guys so bill is now on to the next thing basically What is it when I explain it pro? This is the one that's the app exercise So we can do this on his abs on his glutes on his arms But it's basically just gonna contract his muscles thousands of times in a minute Wow 40% So that feel like that thing where it's like that pregnant thing that you like that. Yeah, like that. Yeah, just like pregnant like Yeah Yeah I don't know why you don't feel uncomfortable.  Oh my god All right Marvel Squad it is finally the time for the video that you guys have all been waiting for I am gonna be coming home at 2 a.m. Like this.  Right now So guys we've had the busiest day, so we are exhausted bills passed out in the room right now And he's like slumped guys like we've been so busy today, and I actually ordered this Halloween mask a couple days ago Cuz I really wanted to film this video shot the Sam and Jess video idea I thought it was super funny and when we're down there.  It's Halloween season It's time for spooky season spooky everything so I gotta come through with a little bit of a prank here Okay, this is about to be so funny guys. I tell you team right comes back with the most lit pranks We come with the best pranks. This is probably one of the gonna be probably one of the most funniest pranks I've ever done on him before the fact that I'm literally gonna be in a scary mask, and he has no idea Poor bill. He just had an awesome day.  I'm gonna stop my talking. We're gonna get right on into this All right guys, let's get right on to this video make sure you guys are hashtag team right in the comments and Let's get our scare on All right guys, I don't know if I've ever showed you this but look at how cute this part is Like it's so festive and fall Instead of the second camera I just put on the mask and it's a lot freaky here Then it was when it was not on me ready. Hey, is that you? Stop messing with me. This is you stop messing with me. It's not funny Like I actually think thought there was another person here. Oh, like obviously, it's no one else Can you just come out? I'm gonna call your phone. Can you stop messing with me?  Another one right here dingle Berry Jerry you know, I knew it was oh my god I think I'm out of breath because I really couldn't breathe in that thing. I knew it was you have to like five minutes No, you didn't right why did you break half of that right there? I Know that's a lot scarier when it's on put it on really quick. You're in a clown mask That's a lot scary. You're in a fringy clown mask. I thought there was either someone in the house or you're messing I honestly thought you were messing it all time Honestly, I think I'm throwing that thing out cuz I'm not letting you scare me with that. I'm hiding it putting it somewhere There are you have you doesn't know it's so late. I know Scarecamp praying you're lucky. I just had an awesome day You just got I just took a little square.  Where were you I was I was I was running around Like a maniac.  No, I scared the sh** out of me That was the only thing after I got back to the back room I was like all right actually where is she and then I heard some ruffling in here So but I knew it was you but I didn't at the same time and when I saw I didn't even see the mask I saw the hair. I thought you were freaking god I got it.  Hey, can you just and then when I couldn't find it? Okay, let me just say if you're breaking into our house. This is this is the intruder. This is what would have happened ready That would have been the intruder. So you're lucky. I wasn't started. What is that mask do to you? I This is not mariah.  I just wanted to prank you. I know I was dreaming. Okay. So I was dreaming I was on a boat right and this boat was like in a in a pond of just like like yellow Cushiny like cloud. Okay. You know what I mean though like it was like like cloud But like yellow it's hard to explain but I was I was in a boat and I was having so much fun Well, I'm sorry, but team ride to come back. My ex was there and everything was on blast So why'd you wake me up from that? Just wait because I'm gonna get you back. I know what one thing, you know halloween's coming up I know one thing that mariah is terrified of They have actually off camera. Do not do any spider pranks. So no not a spider prank Just hopefully we don't have any, you know little kids with knives running around around here like, you know With what?  I will be really mad at you Don't bring that in our house. Maybe maybe I'll just buy a chucky doll and set it somewhere I'll set it behind the toilet. I'll set it in the shower or something. So when you're going when you're going to the bathroom Yes, just get ready. This is only the start. I don't bring that in our house. You should have thought twice before you thank me I'm sorry, but No, this is not. No, this is not fair. You are not getting the final scare Whatever, babe, you're just not going to get the final But if you guys want to end the video post making a shout out everybody right now needs to go follow right now It sounds juvenile. We're going to be giving 10 people shout out next video who goes and spams their instagram account right here They gave me a nice facial today. I don't even know I'm talking right now And then they gave me this ad machine that's supposed to like Define your body more, but it takes a couple sessions. So just stay tuned. I'm going to have rock art Next up I'm doing laser hair guys. So make sure you guys go check them out Go show them in love and we hope you guys enjoyed I can open up your friend because I thought you it's look it when this video gets posted You're shutting off all the lights. It's October 1st, baby.  I'm going to bed. I love you guys and we will see you in the next video But until then God i'm so tired, babe. Why do you gotta wake me up?


We're going to go back to our roots to solve one of the biggest challenges that we face today, which is the volume of data that we are producing. I'm going to show you how we're going to have to go back to our roots as well to solve the next challenge, which is the speed at which we process the data. The amount of data that we produced over the past 100 years, we are today producing it in 10 to 20 minutes. Every 10 to 20 minutes today we produce the same amount of data we produced over the past 100 years. In the next 10 years, we'll produce that in 5 seconds. What is absolutely clear to almost every technologist out there is that we as humans can no longer read and digest this information. We need help. We need serious help. Actually, most of the technologies, if you really dig into it, the ones that are taking the leading edge are the technologies that are getting that help. The essential help is in the form of algorithms. In the past, we could write algorithms quite tractably. You could have a very good mathematician or computer scientist, a theoretician, and you could develop your algorithm. An algorithm is really a series of steps, followed by rules in each step. Calculate this, take this data, merge it with this data, come up with this decision, it's a decision tree, and then you come out with a digested form or an interpretation of that. So it's basically taking your zeroes and ones and transforming them into something that you find useful. Now, there are basically three kinds of algorithms. This is stated very simplistically. Today, that can go beyond the kind of algorithms that we used to use in the past. Basically, we need very sophisticated algorithms, and we actually need machines to help us build those sophisticated algorithms. The one that is very popular today is deep learning. Many of you probably have heard of it. This is what Google is going into. It's with Microsoft, Facebook. Most of the people are using these deep learning strategies. What deep learning really is is a series of neurons or nodes and with successive layers. And when the information comes in, the next layer has to combine that information in a certain way. And in the end, you can train one of these nodes to recognize all the different features and the conditions of a face. So it becomes a face-detecting node. And if you show it enough images of faces or pictures with faces in it, you can train and develop the algorithm. Actually, the algorithm is so complex that you cannot actually understand it, but the machinery can run the algorithm. So this is becoming a very powerful tool, and it will be a very powerful tool that lives in the cloud that you access. And when you want to recognize something, you won't necessarily know or realize that actually it ran through this deep learning algorithm to decide what you were looking at or a certain pattern of information. It's going to become more and more important because the trend is that everything is becoming digital. Our self is becoming digital. Our health is becoming digital. Being able to recognize patterns so that we can make decisions on that is going to become increasingly important. The second is what you can think of as brain-inspired design. Although deep learning is partly brain-inspired design, it's a very structured network, but a brain-inspired design is more of a massive set of interconnections. It's a concept of what the brain could be doing, and we try and mimic that concept. So IBM's Watson, for example, is probably a very good idea of kind of cognitive computing where we look at the brain and we see that it's got sensory areas and it's got reasoning areas and decision-making areas and reward areas. And we mimic those mathematically and try and get the machinery to make these decisions. So Watson can take all of the millions of pages of Wikipedia, for example, and it can actually run it through this kind of conceptual model of the brain and it can make decisions on them, and it's actually incredibly powerful and very useful. The third direction is the emerging direction, and of course this depends now on much more concrete information about the brain, which you could think of as the brain-derived design. Mimic the brain as accurately as possible. After all, it is the product of four billion years of evolution. It has to have the intricate connectivity in the circuits. To get to brain design, you need to understand a lot more about the brain, how it's put together, how the neurons are structured, and the essence is really that you have neurons and you have a lot of cables. You have enough cables in your brain to wrap around the moon a couple of times in just your brain. So there's a lot of cables that are connecting and forming this intricate network and what it's really doing is carrying out an algorithm through these different networks. Just to give you an idea, you also have synapses that have to connect these neurons and these are synapses in a piece of the brain the size of a pinhead, 40 million synapses that have to connect about 30,000 neurons in a small piece, just the smallest possible piece that you could look at. They are the messengers between cells and by controlling these messengers you can control the algorithm but as you can obviously realize, nobody can program this. You have to let it learn and that's why the brain is so powerful that actually learning involves adjusting the algorithm that is happening at all of these different synapses. We are beginning to be able to piece together how these neurons are fitted together, how they connect together and how they function.  What you're really seeing is the brain carrying out algorithms but they're very, very sophisticated algorithms that you have to... and as you learn, you adjust your communication between your different nodes so that you can actually execute that algorithm better and better and faster and faster. This is just an example of the kind of circuitry that you get in such a tiny piece. Again, it's about the size of a pinhead. You have about 7 million connections, 40 million synapses that are connecting them together and we're starting to get a good idea of the blueprint circuits and these circuits could be printed into silicon chips and then run mimicking closely how the algorithm that has come out of evolution. You can of course take that further and this is a simulation of a region of the brain that is where you have now about 5 million cells and they're interacting together, executing the algorithm. Now, of course, you can see that this is very different from what you would look at if you looked at a computer processor and how they are transmitting information. Here there's much more patterns are forming and these patterns are reflecting the kind of algorithm that is being executed in order for the animal to make a decision about what it is it's seeing or to be motivated to change its goal or to achieve a goal. But you can take this now further towards a whole brain simulation and this is the beginning of a whole brain simulation at still a very simple neuron level and one can synthesize these branches because these branches are really the result of the brain evolving to be able to execute more and more sophisticated algorithms but also to be able to learn. So actually one of the reasons why the brain is so complex is that it had to advance the algorithms but it also had to allow them to become adaptable. So you could throw the brain into a different environment and the algorithms would change. So what we are doing to be able to allow these algorithms to change is to embed them into virtual objects structures or virtual mice or virtual animals or a car as I'll show you in a second.  So this is just an example that you would then take this and today already we can couple this in this case it's just a plate that has to balance the ball in this case it's a very small brain circuit that already is able to drive, self-drive a car and as these become more and more sophisticated you will have a single chip that will be able to be plugged into your car and allow you to self-drive it as we go further into the future. So this is an example of a robot in the human brain project one of the things that we're doing the European human brain project is that for many years researchers at the technical university in Munich have been evolving physical robots and this is one of the most advanced, latest robots called Roboy and he's actually a showcase he goes around to stages and to schools and people can interact with them and talk and question and there's a lot of intelligence that's gone into this but now what we will try and do is to see how we can add intelligence to that by using these brain derived circuits that closely mimic how the brain functions. So basically why would you want to go from these fantastic chips that we use today which are fast and highly reliable to a brain like circuit which is somewhat much slower in some sense they communicate in the range of hertz and not gigahertz and very messy appearing very messy. Well there are many different reasons which you can see here it's adaptive, it's iterative, it's self-learning you can throw it into an environment and the algorithm will find its way until it can learn it's contextual which means you change switch of the light and it will adapt so that the algorithm can still operate and it can become very personalized, it can be adapted to you. The most important technological reason really is power and cost efficiency there are ways to get these circuits onto computer chips that now it will be about 10,000 or 100,000 less energy to run than the conventional chips. This is an example of a project run by Karl Heinz-Meier at the University of Heidelberg where they have for many years developed the technology to be able to print these circuits, print, program these circuits with neurons and then they can put them onto a chip and they build them onto a wafer and then you can build them onto a big kind of brain-like computer so this is not just an idea, this has already happened this is a lot of happening and I'll show you many examples there's a small board you can get today, it's a USB stick and you can actually start doing brain-like programming the state of art is this chip called the brain scales chip it developed in Heidelberg where you now can have 4 million neurons and this is some of the most advanced neurons you can put onto silicon with a billion plastic chips so you have a very large network it would cost, it would be incredibly expensive energy-wise to run simulations of that and this can do it 10,000 times faster than you can simulate it on a computer and actually 10,000 times more cost-efficient most important becomes highly user-configurable so even a non-expert can start programming these circuits the second generation is developed by Steve Ferber at Manchester University he was the architect of the ARM processor which is in all your cell phones here he has taken a different route to neuromorphic computing all of this is called neuromorphic computing where he takes commodity hardware which is the ARM processor and it is configured to be able to act as neurons and connections and then they can embed this and they've reached up to about 50,000 chips or a million cores this in principle today can already capture a trillion neurons that's more than the human brain but that's only with one input to each neuron so they could actually go to about a billion neurons with close to 100 billion synapses and as we go further in the next 10 years we will have the hardware to capture the scale of the numbers that they are in the brain the two projects that they are those are both run in the human brain project but there are other projects at Stanford the behind group has built an amazing neuromorphic chip where they basically have only neurons sitting on the chip they can build this into a board they can build a million neurons into it it's about 100,000 times more energy efficient than any chip out there and then they have the connectivity that you can configure the brain's connectivity they have that outside on the conventional system which is something that makes it again energy expensive and not easy to scale but nevertheless this is one of the other exciting developments that have happened in the past few years IBM has developed a very exciting chip as well which basically allows you to put about a million neurons together the more neurons you have the more sophisticated the algorithm is the more sophisticated the connectivity is the more sophisticated the algorithm is the more plasticity you put on it the more you can adapt the algorithm so these are one bit synapses so it's really just a binary system but you can still scale this to very very large systems today and they've built a very nice software on layer on top where you can actually now program these to start building the algorithms that you need for whatever big data challenge you need this can run at real time on very very large data sets Qualcomm has also produced the chip it's a bit of a secret project we don't know exactly what is inside this chip it's called the neural processing unit and it will be added to the normal thing in your cell phone they say where you have the normal compute processor unit you have a graphics processor unit and you have some other processors as well as a neural processing and that allows you to do this kind of human like analysis on the data very low cost very high volumes of data very fast so there are already these five major initiatives different directions some of them complimentary some of them have certain strengths and other weaknesses but they exist today and they are being evolved at an incredibly high speed in order to make it possible for us to digest, make decisions on big data we're talking about petabytes of data or exabytes of data in the future as fast as possible so there's clearly hope that not only can we deal with the volume with DNA storage but we're going to be able to deal with the speed of making decisions on such massive volumes of data there are many applications in the airports you will probably find in the future a neuromorphic chip which is sensing and analyzing odors and it will make a decision whether there is a threat there's the brain like capabilities of an owl to detect sound location is being implemented into neuromorphic systems so that you can easily have a device that would be able to track the positions of anything that's happening in terms of sound around in the world you have something like Watson where you have a massive amount of actual knowledge and data that's coming together and to make decisions on that in the palm of your hand on your phone you would need to still use a neuromorphic processor to decide what is it that you want to know and not just what is possible to get out of the system digital illography is another possible technology that could be supported by neuromorphic computing a big development is that in the brain the whole aspect of intervening by putting in circuits to adjust brain circuits in neuro prosthetics for Parkinson's disease or other types of disease or epilepsy they would have neuromorphic processes to help make decisions as to when to stimulate where to stimulate there's a whole range of others I think the most exciting thing is that what we're really going to feel probably more concretely than anything else is that we're just not going to need to go through all these settings that you have to put your preferences you know your preferences in an iPhone or in whatever application you go into is going to get more and more complicated and you get very irritated I fill in my preference I don't want this I don't want this I don't want this in the future you will have these accompanying chips that will adapt to the world not because you tell it to but because it observes what you do so I think that's going to be something exciting about having this new kind of solution to how we're going to deal with the massive speed of big data thank you


to properly understand what I think is a casualisation of too many workforce so maybe I'll ask Stephen directly of zero hours contracts you say that there's a longer term trend that we should be aware of rather than just explaining it all by the recession perhaps the recession has become a justification for some of these things and you also said that the zero hours contract issue is larger because people now understand it and they had no expectation of anything different to what extent do you think business now actively sees a some business see that actively use zero hours contracts or casualisation as part of their business model and what can we do about that? Okay, can I say first a minute I think it's probably quite important that the committee is realistic about what is likely to be achieved in quantifying this problem I think for the range of reasons we've already heard this morning and I think the zero hours contract issue is illustrative of the wider problems now it's not something that ONS has published on but since it's became a political issue they have done their best to try to go back and redesign a labour force survey and some of the employer surveys to get a better handle on what has happened so on the graph I think I've got on my evidence seems to show a huge jump in 2012 now we would attribute that a better understanding of people understanding that they're on zero hours contracts so when they're then asked a question by the the survey they're able to answer accurately where as before they were asked are you on a zero hours contract wouldn't have been put in precisely that way but does your contract guarantee you a certain number of hours you'll probably answer them inaccurately so that big jump in 2012 probably reflects more accurate responses ONS have also done a lot of work with employers which suggests the figure is significantly higher because clearly employers answer the survey more accurately but for a range of technical reasons that probably overestimates the number of zero hours contracts so I think to be fair to them over the last couple of years they've done a lot of work in this and they're working towards a point where we're going to get a much more accurate measure of the number of zero hours contracts in the economy hopefully that would be disaggregated on a national regional basis by ONS as well we've tried to do our best to extrapolate from the UK figures in understanding that the trends are slightly different particularly in the health service if Scotland's slightly below the UK average on this and we've come up with an estimate for zero hours contracts but we're unable to, I mean the question that you concluded with there I mean to think employers are increasingly taking advantage of labour market conditions to to offer work which is less secure than in the past and I think that anecdotally I can say that is true and it's not of course just zero hours contracts there's also things like pay between assignment contracts there's self-employment which I mean we know in the construction sector for instance bogus self-employment has been a very long standing issue but we now see things like call centres offering people work which is on self-employed contracts and people quite often don't understand that until they're on the point of starting the job so I think anecdotally we can say it's happening but I mean it would be irresponsible to try and quantify that to any extent and we just don't have the information it would allow us to try and begin to put numbers on that Scottish level on you know the proportion of work that is becoming more insecure and the proportion of work that's became more insecure since 2008 I just don't think we can do it but if we accept that insecurity and work is bad for the individual and bad for the economy what are the things that we can do to encourage people to move away from that kind of model well again I mean I would start with the pessimistic point that I think you know a number of highly deregulated labour market and even more deregulated product market which has practically forced a lot of firms down what we would describe as low road approaches to competitiveness and I think many companies' business models are built on insecure low wage work and I think for these kind of employers it's going to be very difficult frankly to set them down another direction and you can present all manner of case studies companies that do this things well they're unlikely to resonate with that kind of company that's doing fine frankly by running these kind of business models I think you know I would go back to what we can do in Scotland to try and change behaviours in this respect I could really do no more than list range of activities I gave reply to Patrick's question but again some of these are pretty long term and pretty difficult you know in terms of economic development policy I mean moving beyond the key sector-led approach to economic development I think that's really a project with the Scottish Government at the moment looking to do just that but I mean outcomes are frankly long term and highly uncertain and it would be again irresponsible to over promise in terms of what that's likely to deliver Can I ask you just finally on the question of unionisation I think it's interesting that the minimum wage policy developed out of particularly women trade unionist feeling that collective bargaining in itself wasn't going to address job segregation and so on but it's the case that unionisation then reflects less job insecurity what in policy terms could be done to support that or is it the business of the Government at any level to be involved in that I mean again I would emphasise alone clearly higher rates of unionisation are a good thing from the STUC's perspective in terms of the literature of what is really important is collective bargaining coverage and there's a subtle but very important distinction between the two and you have for instance when France would be outlier in this respect it's getting 8% union density but it's getting 85-90% collective bargaining coverage for historical and cultural reasons so what can the Government do to encourage and support collective bargaining at Scottish level I mean I guess the easy answer to that is the Fair Work Convention will be looking at this very issue over the coming years I mean to try and give you a slightly more answer to that. I mean it can look at sectors which currently well you could snap the key sectors where currently the Scottish Government provides a significant amount of support and you can look at some of the major employers in those sectors which are unionised have managed to change workplace organisation job design through engagement with the union and you can sell the story through very effective case studies and we've done that ourselves through what's happened at for instance Rolls-Royce Goldbride what happened at the ASIO up in Methw and there's very good case studies in that respect you can be slightly more ambitious and look at some sectors that we know are you know suffer from a very high proportion of low-age low-quality work social care would be probably the most obvious sector and again Government procurement plays a major role in there so how could you start thinking through the various levers that Government has with these sectors how we could use it to encourage even in the first instance to encourage a more European social partnership type approach between employers and unions in these sectors to try and determine things around about pay and job quality etc and move towards perhaps a more prescriptive collective bargaining arrangement I think there's quite a lot that can be there but there's no there's probably just demonstrated there's no quick snappy answer to that and this is complex long-term stuff I think that could I maybe tie up just two parts of your question there and I think in relation to both Serious and Testius of Unionisation I mean we know that we know the impact of collective bargaining coverage comparatively so if you look at the Joseph Rowntree work from a few years ago collective bargaining coverage is the single factor that is related to whether or not there are high proportions of low-paid jobs in an economy so we know that it's very significant and from the point of view of Scotland in the UK I would invite you to consider the fact that there's no evidence of any other alternative systematic forms of voice in UK organisations. We have had times over the last couple of decades where we've talked about non-union channels of collective and individual voice but the reality is if you look at the workplace employment relations survey only 7% of UK workplaces have stand-alone non-union forms of representation so we know that collective bargaining produces good outcomes we know that in the absence of collective bargaining actually there's not much evidence of any other channel at all other than one-to-one communication between employees and managers I take that back to your issue of zero hours contracts a knee jerk issue around zero hours contracts is from my point of view problematic in the sense that there will be circumstances where individuals and employers will be able to align around that perhaps a very small proportion of zero hours contracts will take that form but how you resolve that issue is by having a mechanism of dialogue and voice and so the two things actually are quite well aligned I think we've talked about here is that the Scottish Government's focus right now has been on movement building it's been about cajoling rather than in some ways forcing or really incentivising through things like the business pledge there's no doubt there's a business case economic case to be one with employers on it and all the evidence points that there's no trade off between job quantity and job quality and indeed for businesses who provide decent work they report lower staff turnover higher levels of loyalty better employing morale, lower costs in terms of sick pay and higher productivity and I just wanted to flag up a couple of areas where we have seen progress or certainly through our international work which has much more been about supply chains trying to find common cause with consumers and buyers has worked effectively behind the brands scheme which really tries to have corporate brands competing against each other for improved practice we did some work with the 10 biggest global food and drinks companies and that led to the likes of Coke and Pepsi competing with each other publicly on things like land grabs and land rights within their supply chains it's not just about being critical from the outside it's about supporting businesses towards better practice so we've done some work with Unilever for example in 2013 they allowed us to examine their supply chains in Vietnam that looked at things like collective bargaining living wages, working hours, contract labour and that led to a joint report and positive action from Unilever now I'm sure we would have wanted them to go further but that's an opportunity for where moral suasion comes into its own OK, thank you follow-up the comment that was made about contracts just having completed a project regarding youth football one of the things that surprised me in contact with the HMRC and also biz was that any contract that pays less in the minimum wage isn't a contract to come across that OK, can I just ask one question just to finish off one of the things we've been looking at as a committee is whether there are particular sectors of the economy we should concentrate on we've talked about the care sector we've talked about hospitality for example do we have a view, would these be good examples or are there other sectors you think we should focus on anyone a very important sector because it has a very high proportion of high quality has high quality work as well as low quality work so it's quite a polarised sector hospitality is interesting for a variety of different reasons there's no necessary link between the level of value produced in hospitality and the quality of jobs so you don't necessarily have a much better job if you work in a five-star hotel than if you work in a no-star B&B both of those are interesting areas there are also areas where clearly in terms of the proportion of women workers there are huge gender issues I think from our point of view as well that one of the things that hasn't been mentioned yet is the concept of value and how we value types of work and who's doing that particular type of work and Joanne alluded to it there we're talking about female dominated workplaces in the care sector so if you are going to look at the care sector then obviously it's women that are concentrated is women that are doing it so what we know about undervaluing is that there's two aspects to it it is the type of work that women tend to do because it's traditionally done in the home such as caring is low paid because women do it and because the skills are not seen they're not valued very much and then there's the other type of undervaluing where women are paid less for doing the same work as men so I think that any particular sector focus needs to take to focus on value and how that contributes towards job quality I think that's really important in terms of how you define work and whether this inquiry looks at unpaid work for example within its remit as well and just broadening beyond the sectoral focus I guess as well as women ethnic minorities, migrant workers more likely to work in the types of jobs where job quality is an issue so perhaps worth taking that into account financial services I think is particularly interesting I think for a number of reasons and clearly hitherto it's provided pretty decent employment particularly in retail banking it's obviously been through massive change over the last few years and certainly our quite strong anecdotal evidence suggests that the quality of work is deteriorated very significantly but I think probably most importantly looking to the future it's a sector that's really going to be most clear to the world and I guess in terms of technological change and what that might mean for job quantity and quality perhaps worth looking at That's been helpful and I think we're at the end of our time so on behalf of the committee I say thank you to all of you for coming along it's been very useful just to help set the scene and no doubt we will come back to you as the inquiry continues and at that we will suspend and go into private session


Hi everyone. In this video, we are going to create a project to explain how to compare two objects and name this compare to project. For the purpose of this example, we are going to create a very simple class, which is our favorite rectangle class. And all that it contains are instance variables width and height. We create one constructor and here width becomes math dot max 0 comma w. So we're going to perform some validation just to make sure that width and height are not assigned invalid values. And we will also implement our two string function so that when the object is displayed, this function is called automatically, this method is called automatically. And this returns is whatever the width is by whatever the height is. Let's add one more method, which is the diagonal of this rectangle on which this method is called. So we don't have to pass the object as a parameter. We're going to call this method on an object. And what we return is map dot square root square of width plus square of height. That's the Pythagoras theorem talking. We're going to create a client rectangle. So we can call it rectangle client containing public static void main. And we're going to create two objects here rectangle. R equals new rectangle. Let's say two by three. And another rectangle s, which is four by one. Let's quickly change the definition of the two string and say area equals the area. Oh, area function. Okay, so we have to add another method area, which returns width times. All right, go back to rectangle client and we create these rectangles and we display objects r and s. Now this program you can see in the console that we get two by three, area six, four by one, areas four. So what we're going to do is we won't compare which one is bigger, whether it's r or it's s. It's for this purpose that we create the method compared to inside a function. So compared to is nearly a special method. Obviously we're going to call compared to on a rectangle object and we call that object the calling object. So here what we already know is compared to will be called on a rectangle object. We call this the calling object and it's referred to by a very special keyword this inside the method. In short, we say that this is a reference copy of the calling object. So if I call the method on object r, r is my calling object and this will refer to the same instance that r refers to. If I call it an s, this will refer to the same instance that s refers to. But we are also going to pass another rectangle object. So whichever object we pass as parameter to compare to will be reference copied into other, which means other is a reference copy of the actual parameter. Alright, so that's all you need to know in terms of compared to and what is compared to do. Let's say return. What do we return? We return one if calling object is more than parameter object. We return minus one if calling object is less than parameter object and we return zero if calling object is equal to parameter object. But how do we define more than less than equal to so we have to specify the comparison criterion or comparison criteria. In this case, I'm going to use area. So the area of calling object which is copied into this is more than the area of other object. Then we return one. So what I'm going to do is because the areas are also integers. I'm going to call them as a one. You don't have to do that. You can compare directly this dot area with other dot area, but I'll make intermediate copies and keep them in a one and a two. And after that, it's pretty smooth sailing. Once we know what's the calling object and parameter object. Once we copy the area, all we have to do is compare the areas if even is more than a two, it means calling object has a bigger area return one. It's guaranteed if you reach line number 47 that even is either less than or equal to a two. So we check is even less than a two and return minus one if that's the case. If we reach line number 51, it's guaranteed that even must be equal to a two otherwise we wouldn't be here and we can return zero unconditionally. Please note that if you put if you wrap return zero around a one equals a two, which we know for a fact is true, your method will complain Java will complain that the method must return a result of type int. That's because all three written statements are conditional. And that's why since it's guaranteed that even is equal to a two at line number 52, you can return zero directly. We'll go back to the rectangle client and we'll say int result equals r dot compare to s. Here are is calling object and s is parameter object. So you can as I said earlier, the calling object is referenced copied into this. The parameter object s is referenced copied into other. It doesn't necessarily mean that we have to name it other you can name it whatever you want. Let's open our lecture notes and take a look at conditions functions inside objects. Please do take a look at this example that I've provided here. Here I have R1 compared to R2. And therefore, in the scope of R1 dot compare to R2, this is a reference copy of R1, because the calling object is R1. And other is a reference copy of R2 because the parameter object is R2. And that's your method definition. Very quickly, we're going to run this. And what we're expecting is that if the area of the calling object, which is R, and its area six is more than a two, which is four, it will return one. So when I run this program and display result, I'm expecting one. Oops, not one directly result. Okay, let's run this. And you can see that the outcome is one. On the other hand, if I call the method on object s and par pass R as the parameter, now s has become the calling object and R is the parameter. And now we're expecting the parameter to be the outcome to be minus one. If I pass both s as calling object and parameter, basically this and other refer to the same instance, and our answer would be zero. Okay, let's revert back to R.complete to s, place breakpoints in our function that is expected. And I can guarantee that if you stay with me for the entire duration of debugging, then things will become much, much easier for you to understand. So here I'm going to say this is the result and return result. All right. Let's put breakpoints in the area. I'm going to put breakpoints in area a little bit later. I'm going to debug our program. And you can see in the variables that I have two objects of type rectangle R and s, R has an ID of 21, s has an ID of 22. When I call compare to, I'm calling it on object R. And the parameter is s. In my rectangle class, as I said, the calling object is copied into this and the parameter object is copied into others. What I'm expecting is this will have an ID of 21 and other will have an ID of 22 if what I say is right. So if I resume my execution from line number 11 in rectangle client, I will jump into the compare to method, but I didn't put these debug points. But that's fine. You can see this has an ID of 21, other has an ID of 22. Let's stop the debugging and run it one more time. So debug. This time, R has an ID of 22, s has an ID of 24. If I resume, you can see this has an ID of 22 and other has an ID of 24. So this is a reference copy of R, other is a reference copy of s. A1 is this dot area. Now this is three by two. So we are expecting A1 to be six. And A2 is other dot areas. You're calling the method area on object other, which is one by four. So the answer should be four, which is correct. And the checks is six more than four. Yes, it is. And we enter the conditional block and it returns one, which is what we described. On the other hand, if I swap these around and change the calling object to s and debug my program once again, s has an ID of 23 and R has an ID of 21. So when I go into the area method, I'm expecting this to have an ID of 23, other to have an ID of 21. So that's exactly what's going to happen. This has 23, other has 21. Then we are calling the method area on object this, which is one by four. So it's area should be four, A1 will be four, and A2 will be other dot area. So other is three by two, its area would be six, and A2 is six. This time, it will skip the first conditional block. But it does go to the second conditional block and it returns negative one. And result becomes negative one. And that's our answer. As I said earlier, I didn't put breakpoints in the area method. Let's put breakpoints in the area method as well. And debug our program once again. Let's stop the debugging and remove or terminate it, debug the program once again. I think I made some mistake. Let's see. Let's go here. It's because of this. Because when I displayed R and S, two string was called and two string was calling area. That's why I'm going there. So let's get rid of that. Debug our program. Result is S dot compare to R. Note S has an ID of 23. R has an ID of 21. So in the compare to method, because S is the calling object, this has an ID of 23. And other has an ID of 21. And now this, what I'm going to say is the key. Next, what we're doing is we're calling the method area on object, this, which has an ID of 23. So when I jump into the area method, again, in the scope of area, this reference is created now. That this reference is different to this reference from compare to anyways. So here, this is 23. So when I call this dot area, it jumps into area. And the this reference in area will also have ID 23. So when I resume, you can see we are inside area and this has an ID of 23. Okay, result is for and it returns it to compare to then we call other dot area. Other has an ID of 21. And it's the calling object for area. And because it's the calling object for area, inside the method area, this will be a reference copy of other. So when I resume this, inside area, there'll be a this reference, but it's ID will be 21. And there you go. This has an ID of 21. And it's area six return. And everything else is the same. So that's an A to Z explanation of the compare to method. Well, almost instead of comparison criteria criterion, it can be comparison criteria. So area and diagonal. So basically, if areas are clearly different written one or minus one, but if they're the same, then check the diagonal. So here, we start checking the diagonal. So we say double D one equals this dot diagonal, double D two is other dot diagonal, and the same thing again. By the way, there are easier way to do this, but obviously in Compt 1010, we expect students to do everything from scratch for better or worse, return minus one one and zero unconditionally. We're going to change our rectangle client a little bit. I'm going to name have this as three by four, and five by one. So here, clearly, our has a bigger area. So it will return one. Let's stop debugging and run it in Java perspective outcome is one that's good. If I call it on S, by passing our S clearly has a smaller area. So it will turn minus one. But if S has the same area is going to go and check the diagonal. So if I say R dot compare to S, it will jump into R dot compare to this is a reference copy of our other is a reference copy of S. It's not even is not more than a two even is not less than a two. Yes, it is equal to a two. So they'll check the diagonals. The diagonal three by four and the diagonal of six by two, it will compare. And those won't be equal and return one or minus one. Now, which one has a bigger diagonal? Let's see three by four. So three square plus four squared is nine plus 1625 while six square plus two squared is 36 plus 440. So S has a bigger diagonal. So S is bigger. So R dot compare to S returns minus one. Let's run this and we get minus one. If we compare S compared to R, we'll get plus one. And if S represents a rectangle of four by three, then the diagonals are also of the same length. In this case, R compared to S or S compared to R will return zero because the diagonals areas are the same and diagonals are the same point being that compared to can have any number of levels of comparison criteria. So we call here areas the primary comparison criteria diagonal is the secondary comparison criteria. So there you go. That is compared to if you follow the instructions, if you follow the specifications, if you understand reference copies clearly, basically, if you're diligent, it's not a problem at all. Thank you very much and hope you have a good day. Take care.