All right, well, it's very, very exciting. It looks like some new folks joining us today. So let me just introduce myself. I'm Mel Hauser. You see the pronouns and I'm executive director here. It all brings belong from my welcome to brain club. So what I will be doing is sharing screen and we'll do our usual introduction to get everyone oriented to our ground rules of community agreement. So we will be discussing today, book chat on the book, Uniquely Human by Barry Presant. And don't worry if you haven't heard the book. That's the thing about book chats. Here it all brings belong. We don't expect anyone to read the book at the book. So we're gonna be joined by, joined asynchronously by a panel of community members, all sharing their perspectives on the book. We also have a video clip from Dr. Presant talking about the book. And then we'll have plenty of time for discussion. But first, community agreement. All forms of participation are okay here. So as many of you have already figured out, you can have your video on or off. And even if it's on, we do not expect anything of you. We certainly do not expect you to look at the camera. You can feel free to walk, move, stim, fidget, eat, sleep, come back, and everyone is welcome. And all communication is welcome. So you can, and all forms of communication are welcome. So you can unmute and use mouth words. You can type in the chat box. You can, you know, whatever, however you are comfortable communicating is all welcome here. And speaking of communication, I'll just say a word about language. You'll hear me tonight and maybe other people using identity-first language as we discuss autism. Because for me, autism is part of my identity.   And in addition to affirming all aspects of identity, it's really important to us that we respect and protect one another's access needs. So access needs being anything that anyone needs to fully and meaningfully participate. And I'll also say that today is for education purposes only, we will not be giving medical advice. And speaking of access needs, these are the additional considerations informed by our community advisory board to just acknowledge that we all have a broad range of communication access needs. We, many of us have the kinds of brains that don't feel the passing of time. And, you know, I think that noting that when we have access needs, the conflict, for example, I have a kind of brain that like will run on for like 20 minutes without taking a breath. And that may not be creating space for other people to dialogue. And so just normalizing that, naming that, that we're gonna, you know, as a facilitator that I'm gonna try to take lots of space to and pausing for processing so that everyone can participate who wants to be. Although, of course, no direct pressure to chime in, but we wanna be able to create space for people to join the conversation. Last bit of access. So if closed captioning is already enabled, you just have to toggle it on if you'd like to use it. So depending on what version of Zoom you have, either clicking the live transcript closed captioning button or if you don't see that, you can click the more dot, dot, dot and choose show subtitles. And then if you wanna turn them off, do the same thing and choose hide subtitles. Okay, all ready. So the book will be discussing tonight uniquely human, but Dr. Barry Persant was, you know, when it was first released, there's been a couple of versions that have come up now, but initially written and published in 2015, it was a paradigm shift. 2015 was a long time ago. And this book that has now, you know, by this point, this is, I think the best selling book about autism since it came out and, you know, the winner of a number of awards and is Lizzie pointed out today is also the highest best selling book on Amazon, you know, year after year after year. Anyway, relating to autism. And so like, when we think back to 2015, though it was, you know, a long time ago and yet not that long ago, it was ahead of its time as far as introducing a paradigm shift, talking about how, you know, autism is not a disorder. Autism is a different way of being wired. And this was one of the first books to advocate for shifting to a focus on strengths and building relationships, seeking to understand autistic behavior and not to control and try to extinguish it. And a large portion of the book was informed by interviews with autistic people, elevating the value of lived experience. And so, and it was also one of the first books written for a mainstream audience of parents and educators that used identity first language. And that was new. And so one of the things that comes up sometimes is that, you know, yeah, how has the dialogue evolved since 2015? Well, it's evolved significantly as the emergence of the neurodiversity movement. And, but this book really was ahead of its time. So as we, the first thing we'll do is watch a brief clip, interview with Dr. Prasant in 2023. It's talking about neurodiversity and many thanks to Dr. Alyssa Minkin, host of the Jewish Orthodox Women's Medical Association podcast for sharing this interview with us. All right, David, take it away. Hi, you need to turn off screen sharing. I can't do it while you're doing it. There you go. Sorry. That's okay. Here you go. All right. I had to slightly edit it down to size because they can't stream it right from YouTube. But so it'll just take me one second here. Hopefully it's in the right order. Here you go. I also want to talk more about neurodiversity because we mentioned it at the beginning and we didn't really explain. I think there's a neurodiversity lens as opposed to a pathology lens. And this is what I wish healthcare professionals, educators could get. Yes. Talk a little bit more about what I mean by that. Yeah, and I'm gonna quote the name of Mel's group that she's formed. It's called All Brains Belong. I love it. All Brains are awesome from here. That's right. And what a neurodiversity lens appreciates is that every person is wired differently. Every person therefore perceives the world differently, experiences emotions differently, experiences sensations differently, is good at some things, not so good at other things. So it's kind of anti pathologizing because we've looked at people good at some things and not so good at other things. And we've said that person is deficient or we label it a disorder. Now, I'm not talking about serious medical illnesses here. Okay. Or serious behavior problems, which we, yeah. Yeah, but even people who are, for example, highly anxious, okay? Or people who have bipolar and may have serious kind of problem behaviors because of that. There we're talking about, in some cases, medication may be helpful because the source is a neurochemical source or maybe a source of seizures, might be the source of behavior that's just harmful to self, harmful to others. What we're talking about is literally every person, you and I have kind of a profile of things we're very good at, things we're okay at, things we're lousy at, we'll never be good at, okay? And we need to make changes in work settings, in society to accommodate for people's differences so that everybody could have a good quality of life and be successful. So let me give an example of my wife. My wife does not, she's not on the spectrum, she does not have an identified, quote unquote, disability. Thanks, David. You're welcome. So just to catch up in the chat, so I just shared that, really an honor to teach your Dr. Bresson mentioned the work that we're doing here at Albury's Belong and thank you to everyone in the chat who shared the enthusiasm. So with that, oh, thank you, Mary. With that, I'm now going to transition right into our community panel, share screen. So Hannah Bloom, occupational therapist, works with children and adults, is also a member of our board of directors. Jen Bryant, a returning panelist, special educator here in Montpelier, and then I'm a panelist. I've never been a brain club panelist before. Sarah interviewed me, which was really fun to do. So this will run about 15 minutes and we'll have the chat rolling while we watch. And then we'll have plenty of time for discussion. All right, David, I'm gonna stop share, you can reshare and we'll get going. All right, so we're here today talking to Hannah about uniquely human by Dr. Bresson. Seems like trust is a big theme of this book and building trust with the kiddos that you interact with through your work as an occupational therapist. The core of occupational therapy is to be a part of a team that the individual creates with themselves in it that creates meaningful occupation and participation and quality of life, explores that as the, what does that look like for me as an individual as a unique human in this big world? Without trust as the base of that as a team member, my participation in that team, at best it's perfunctory and like whatever, just go away, you non-functional person on the team and at worst it's traumatic because as the OT there's a possibility that I would come in and give these like, do these things and without trust, there's just, there's no reason that my direction should be there. Like when I read this book, when Luna was about two and a half shortly after her autism diagnosis, I read this book and I was like, oh, that makes sense. And it really put me on a journey, like building on what I had learned from self-reg by Stuart Shanker about nervous system regulation and co-regulation.  One of the questions that we're asking panelists is whether you see this come up in your practice in terms of developing and building trust as being essential. It seems to be a big theme of this book in terms of the children that you interact with on a daily basis. This is not a kid thing. This is an every human thing everyone needs to feel safe. Trust and safety come first for people of all ages. How do I heal safety? Which we talk a lot about, how do I invite another person into connection with me? How do I get myself invited into their connection because I have to work to get invited in? And then once that's happened, how do I show up in authenticity and in belief enough times that that nervous system now trusts my nervous system? As a teacher, are there ways that you work on building sort of a sphere of trust with the children that you work with? Yeah, it's gonna sound a little cheesy, but I think being uniquely human kind of does that. So I am my own self with each kid that I work with. And I listen to who each student is. I really, truly think that kids can feel when you authentically care about them and are happy to have meaningful conversations with them and listen to who they are and what they need and what they want to tell you. Yeah, another thing that seemed to come out of the book was the idea of sort of digging beneath behaviors, looking at behaviors. And this is where it sort of reminded me a little bit of Ross Green and collaborative proactive solutions. And the idea of like the behavior is just the signal, it's just the fever, like Dr. Green says, kind of digging beneath that and looking at what's going on underneath. Does that resonate with you? It definitely does. And I think I love Ross Green of looking at those lagging skills and I love looking at those skills where they're flourishing as well. And that book really did bring that up. So I think when we work to eliminate behaviors without understanding their purpose, behaviors that are signals that we need something and need that's not met. He really went into it in the book, talking about being a detective and how it was our job to do that. There was one story that I felt was so fitting because they do have students where I never can quite figure out what it is that is causing an issue. And it was a story about driving through a neighborhood and one of the buildings reminded him, the student of something else. And the parents were able to piece that together but so often when we have little pieces of who a student is, it's hard to piece those together for sure. Can you talk to me a little bit more about, you know, your beliefs around behaviors and how they present and what that means? Yeah, yeah, the information given to me by another nervous system is always, when I have access to it, which I do in work a lot, is met with curiosity. And it's very much met with like, okay, something is being communicated to me that I need to understand because I'm the adult, because I'm the professional, because I'm in the role of figuring this out, of being a part of this that is coming to it with genuine curiosity and presume competence and belief in meaningful occupation and belief in participation. So if I'm getting communication that something is not gelling within this other nervous system, that's the curiosity of like the task analysis, the little Rolodex in my head that I start to go through. What are some ways that you dig beneath behaviors when you're looking at somebody's behaviors, behaviors? So somebody does a thing and I automatically ask to myself first, I wonder why that's happening. And like as a parent, I learned that from this book. What are the factors in the environment? Or actually like, I think like, rewinding of like the algorithm of like what goes on up there is like I see behavior and I presume dysregulation. I just presume it. It's like that would not have happened if that person were regulated. So then I wonder why are they dysregulated? I wonder what are the factors of the environment? What are the cognitive aspects? What were the expectations? What are the access needs that are not met? Like the interpersonal access needs. And then I find a way to like, I hypothesis test about that. And then I like check whether I'm correct when the person's regulated. I might make some comment like, I noticed in the middle of the night that you flipped your lid. I wonder if it's because you were expecting Daddy to transport you to your room. And that didn't happen. And then my six year old might tell me, yes or no, whether I'm correct. But this is like a debrief. It's like the see behavior, wonder why hypothesis form test hypothesis. Like that's how my algorithm works. You know, I really like the double empathy piece that's come into conversation a lot lately too. Like, all right, we're all human. And this nervous system has had a day where they're taxed. And that's totally a part of the reality of walking this earth in community. And kind of breaking away from having that spotlight on one person that really diffused that light. And like, yeah, a lot of people are having hard days. And on we go, hold space for that, allow it to be there and accept it as a part of the communication of the day. You know, and then not to discount when those behaviors are things that are painful, self-injurious behaviors. Like when those behaviors become things that attention needs to be given to, then absolutely we dive deeper as a team and say, what's the function of this behavior?  Why are we picking at our cuticles till they believe? Why are we smashing our head with our fist in response to things like those behaviors and others? Absolutely. That becomes the part where there is a reason for the algorithm for the model where it says this thing needs to change. How do we change the environment to affect this behavior? How do we change the expectations to change this behavior? What are the things in this orbit that can help provide safety when this behavior is unsafe? So I would say that trust is an essential ingredient for safety and safety comes first, right? So like if you don't feel safe within the context of a relationship, nothing else happens. So safety, then engagement, then communication, then et cetera, et cetera. If you don't feel safe, nothing else happens. And so what I see in my practice, people of all ages don't feel safe. Luna would be just constantly flipping her lid and I read in Newtley Human this example of having a board that told the child in the book where their person was. So we developed a daddy board and we would write what room of the house daddy is in at all times. And just doing that to signal safety, that went such a hugely far away because at any given time, Luna could refer to the daddy board on the refrigerator and we just had an arrow of upstairs or downstairs. What floor of the house is daddy on? And that helped regulation tremendously. There was a portion of the book where they talked about classifying typical autistic behaviors as autistic behaviors. And he spoke to a group in the book if I'm remembering it correctly and asked what kind of behaviors are you talking about? And it was things like, well, flapping. And he was saying, well, when I get anxious, they tap my feet or talking to yourself. And it was another person who said, you know, I also talk to myself all the time when I'm thinking things through or when I'm cleaning and so many of the behaviors that we label as autistic behaviors really are just common human behaviors that we're all doing. And we do use them to regulate, but with this idea that we do that ourselves in private or that it's wrong and so we don't show those healings. And when we think of this as a way for students to regulate, we stop looking at things like bouncing on the rug during morning meeting or like not gazing into your eyes or looking at you. Those aren't necessarily signs that a student isn't engaged and isn't learning. Those are signs that a student is regulating their bodies so that they can be attending and so that they can be learning. And I think it's so important to remember that. I think that so much we get stuck in changing. And this, I mean, uniquely human was so wonderful about kind of affirming this and giving it language. We so much want to change the individual to fit in our perceptions of the world. And if we can look at the world as a wonderfully diverse and expansive place to them, community as that, then how do we create the environment that allow the individual to be uniquely who they are? And I want that for myself. And so why not give that as a base of it for everybody we interact with? The other part that I thought was really huge was just one line in the book that I thought really resonated in. It was talking about rather than autism spectrum disorder, that idea of neurotypical spectrum disorder where it's really easy to ask that perspective taking from autistic people of why people do things. So explaining, oh, he said that but he didn't really mean it. And when you look at it the other way, it's, but why would you say it if you didn't mean it? So that kind of perspective taking from both sides and looking at the idea that both neurotypical and neurodivergent people have different ways of expressing things and not all of the ways that neurotypical humans express things really make sense. It's a book that I've looked back on and reflected on in my own practice and in my own life and really taking a skill-based viewpoints and some of the things that came from it were huge and there were parts that I didn't love and it's a nice reminder that this was written quite a while ago and we've learned and as we get new information and learn more, we put that to use. We're so much further along now in our understanding of what is expected and what is appreciated within all of society that I think we're looking now at these uniquely human humans all around us. I heard this book, I bought a bunch of copies of it and gave it to everyone working with my child. I did that for years. You know, there's a lot about the intentionality of how I work and how I feel like OT has the capacity to work where it's, I find joy in the joy of whatever is happening in the moment. Like it can be and the range of things all hold the same amount of joy, vacuum cleaners to Pokemon cards, to fairy houses, to world politics. All of those things, the joy is actually in, for me, the joy is in finding the person who's finding joy in the activity or the topic or the action and that creates a connection. I'm so happy that you are happy about these things and I wanna know more about that happiness and that joy. All these years later, it's still just incredible to me how many professionals don't see the world this way and they don't have this paradigm. It's not the way they were trained and we wonder why there's chaos, right? Because safety comes first and the basic paradigm through which you see the world ultimately has a huge implication for the relationship. If you are seeing someone through a deficit-based lens, they feel it and they're not gonna feel safe with you. So that ending, right? That's building on the conversation we had a couple of weeks ago when we talked about the impact of stigma on autistic health. And Lizzie, can you throw the link to the recording to that in the chat? Because I think that the lens of uniquely human is the opposite of that, right? So when you view someone through a lens of pathology, how could that not impact your relationship? And how could that not group? And so I think that, thanks Lizzie, I think Amy. So I just wanna, there's been just a lot of conversation in the chat that I can catch us up but I first I just wanna open it up to what's standing out for anyone after either directly or indirectly related. Cause of course, everything's connected to everything. So whatever thoughts are coming to mind, they are welcome here. Kelly, go for it. Hey, sorry, I'm painting so that's why my camera was off. But working with other professionals that were trained a long time ago, I've talked about this before, leads to some frustrating moments. What would you recommend or what would anyone recommend as kind of a gateway piece of literature? Like I thought about using uniquely human. I also thought about using sincerely your artistic child. Do you have any recommendations for a gateway piece of literature that you think would introduce things in a way that would be less likely to make people defensive and more likely to make people listen? Yeah, so I think uniquely human is an example of, I think, something that professionals who are at least open to learning may be able to connect with. I also think that you could approach this, like zooming way out, not necessarily talking about autism specifically, is that I think many professionals accept the premise that we're always learning new information. So when we talk about the brain science of nervous system regulations, so a book like, and I made a reference to this in my comments, the book Self-Reg by Stuart Schenker about the physical, emotional, cognitive, social, pro-social triggers and regulating variables for an individual or beyond behaviors by Mona Della Hook. I think it's really about, like this is new. It's not new. It's always been like this since the dawn of time, but these are books that present brain science so that it's like, it's the oblique angle where you don't tell the people you're doing it wrong. You just, you learn to this new information that it's so exciting and it's new and we can apply it. So that, just reading Allie says frustration that the attempts at helping others who are different has led to the pathological lens that dehumanizes so many of us, so grateful that we have communities like ABB that are shifting the paradigm. Thank you. Steve says, one caveat, not all behaviors are autistic, neurodivergent children do simply misbehave and that's a wonderful thing, right? It's developmental. It is a, it's part of human growth and often the problem is that professionals cannot parse the difference. And Allie adds to that that when you label someone, it's so easy to view all their behaviors from the narrow lens of a problem. Yes. And it also becomes, you know, people talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. You know, I think that it's energetic. If I enter a space and someone is judging me through a negative lens, I feel that and it's not only that I fulfill the prophecy, it's that I'm dysregulated by the prophecy. So like you think that about me, I feel it and it hurts me and I'm much more likely to be dysregulated. And again, we talk about this a lot at Brain Club is that when the, sorry, Kelly, I'll come to Jim Sinclair in just a minute. Thank you for bringing that up. I'm gonna, I'll pull up his famous piece that I can link in the chat. But we talk a lot about at Brain Club that we're talking about brain. I don't remember. It was, what was I saying? Anybody? Was that you've used someone dysregulated? Oh man. It's gonna be one of those things. What you were saying about, you know, you get dysregulated and it leads to fulfilling the prophecy even though you weren't there to begin with, but maybe you've gone on beyond that. You felt what they were feeling towards you. Yeah, that. I think that when that happens and we have these, oh, I remember, thank you, Mary. I got a June and Mary together. You like support. Thank you for supporting all that goes on up there or it doesn't go on up there. Is that we hold downstairs brain to the standards of upstairs brain where we are in, you know, meaning, so this is using Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Tina Payne Brayson's model where the cortex is upstairs brain, the limbic system is downstairs brain. The limbic system is involuntary, automatic reactions to what's happening in the environment.  It's not like, oh, you know, what are the pros and cons of throwing that toy?  I'm gonna do it anyway. That's not happening at all. People are under threat and limbic system is reacting. Christina says, I think sometimes even when we think about people in a growth lens, we have to be careful to not have the view that if only they could improve this thing, they would be better. It's often better to accept them where they are and support their own exploration, right? Yeah, I think that whenever we are sending the message implicitly or explicitly that there's something that is fundamental about a person that needs to be changed, there are many nervous systems who experience that as threat. Even if it's well intended of like, I wish you could dress yourself or I wish you could do the thing, like that is experienced by many nervous systems as a threat. And as Ali said, kicks pick up on that, this lack of hope for their future and it feeds that self-fulfilling prophecy, right? But we talk about so often presuming competence for all people at all times, for all ages. And that all too often is presuming competence, it's presuming good intent. It's like Dr. Ross Green says that kids do well if they can. I shared that line with Luna the other day for the first time and she's six and it meant something of like, yeah, when this thing happened your access needs were not met. And then later when we debrief things, it's like, let's think about what was upsetting about that and what could have made it better for you, Luna. Laura, I just called you Luna, that just happened. That was the biggest honor ever to be mistaken as Luna for a second. So now one of the things that I find when I'm talking to professionals who are new to this paradigm is that that's a great lens for the so-called high functioning autistic and they separate out this as though we're talking about something completely different when we're talking about people who have a higher level of disability. Do you have a response that you use when people like, I kind of just talk about, we're really talking about the same picture and dysregulation and that kind of thing but I'm wondering how you respond to things like that or if you see that. What we know now is that functioning labels are unhelpful and that for all of these nervous systems, there are fluctuating capacities depending on the demands from the environment and the demands on the cognitive load on that brain. I see something like that. I wonder if, because I know there's a lot of people who probably encounter this in various realms. What do we say when we hear a professional use an outdated paradigm that is not rooted in brain science related to functioning labels? Mel, I also hear it from a decent number of parents when I present research that say like, that's great but it doesn't apply to my child and they sort of give this alternate view that's totally unrelated. I don't know if you see that with any... Oh yeah, I mean, I actually also see it with, I mean, there's, there are people that, there are some people that as part of their self discovery of their own neurodivergence that sometimes there is like an elitism that people kind of ascribe to or incorporate. And it's like we talk about it brain club a lot is that you don't challenge brain rules.  It's not like it's a law of physics. So if somebody, if there's, if someone has a narrative of like, this is what I have to tell myself to make my world make sense. And you're challenging that. That's not gonna get there. So that narrative needs to be amended by the person. And so it's about strewing the content and they will take of it what they will. For what I can say is that when people... I'll just give a personal example because again, I am agreeing with Annika saying, quote, high functioning is a trigger word for me because especially since I found the understand that that label was what led me to not receive support that I really needed as a child. That is absolutely so common. So anyway, when I'm in, I remember once attending there was a group where men, there were several autistic adults who were themselves using functioning labels. So I raised my hand and I said, the week I got my autism diagnosis, the week I got my autism diagnosis, I lost the motor planning skills to brush my teeth like mic drop, I'm a physician. So like that is, that's the story that I think that you're providing evidence. You're strewing it and then people will pick up what they're able to make meaning of. But what we know is that functioning labels are wrong and the fluctuating nature of support needs is more common than not. Yeah, I think also on the other side of that, if we use the word low functioning, if we're trying to like describe people, it kind of limits their or skews their ability to show off the way that they would like to show up too. It's like a double-edged sword because somebody isn't communicating the way that you expect people to communicate doesn't mean that they can't and cognitive abilities, communicative abilities, those are all separate categories. And I think we shouldn't lump them into one functioning label like we sometimes do. Yeah, and I think that using a label like low functioning is the opposite of presuming competence. Steve says it's okay to show that we can be successful, which is way different than this functioning business. Yes, and I think that what we would want to see is we'd want to see that everyone has their access needs met. And we know that so many neurodivergent people don't have their access needs met. And I'm just catching up in the chat, Lillian says the linear view of autism is so misleading. There is some not cool discussion about embedding language for separating people who need more support right now and trigger warning for the label profound autism. And that is that controversy coming out from researchers advocating this lens as being met with huge resistance from many members of the autistic community. Yeah, and as CB says, ranking functioning is so dehumanizing, yes, could not agree more. And I think that it's one of the things I think about both as a parent of an autistic child and as a doctor taking care of autistic people of all ages is that talking about the fluctuating support needs is really important because when you have the kind of brain that derives safety from predictable systems, it actually can be quite dysregulating when you've not normalized a culture of interdependence. You've glorified independence and now someone needs more support and there's not a framework for that of how normal that is, that can be really hard. So I like to talk about that with really all children and even with my patients who are typically developing, I'm like trying to put through these comments of like we all have different brains, we all have things that come easily, things that come hard. When things are hard, it's okay to ask for help, it's normal. Christina says, I really only feel like I share myself on quote, functioning days because I have this internal stigma, right, internalized ableism on the quote, not functioning days. Allie says functioning should be determined by the individual's perspective of their quality of life, not their ability to meet society's expectations, amen to that, yes. Steve says, if hyperlexia leads you to have difficulty communicating with others, how is that functionally different than aphasia? I don't know, but I wonder how is that different than echolalia? So let's just grab the echolalia piece. So just a little bit of jargon busting. Echolalia refers to repeating sounds. And so the idea, and this could be immediate. And there are so many people who have no idea that they are echolalia, they're adults and they're listening to you in conversation and they repeat your last word back to you to show that they're listening, echolalia. So that's common and so then there's delayed echolalia and there's a lot of people who they are processing language as like chunks and scripts. So, you know, and whether that be, Lizzie says, I realized I was doing delayed echolalia today and it says, I recently noticed that I repeat back synonyms. Oh, that's awesome. So I think that, you know, like the, this is just, this is common. And I think that there are, you know, just, there's, actually I'm gonna share a story that I'm not proud of. Luna's new thing is that she likes to watch videos of herself as a baby and a toddler. And we watch this together when she's falling asleep, like things that we've collected in like an app that we've kept track over time. And we're watching these things. And I am remembering back then when I was, you know, an unrecognized autistic parent. And there were things that she did that were so worrisome to me that, and I'll tell her about that with the lens of I didn't know. I didn't know how you were making sense of the world. And when I think about how for so long, she was communicating with echolalia. They were in the form of like, you know, even like, you know, two syllables of a chunk that went together. And she was communicating so much with these things. But in the moment, I remember freaking out of like catastrophizing of all of the, like the ways that kids would bully her, she was too. And I think this is what goes on for a lot of people. And I think that one of the, you know, Dr. Virginia Spiegelman, who is the executive director of the Star Institute, we once had a conversation and about how one of the reasons that internalized ableism has so much purchase is about the, you know, the unrecognized neurodivergent parent of the neurodivergent child who sees something that reminds them of what, of their own experience and their own trauma. And so desperately wants to shut that down. And I think that part of the unlearning, the self-regulation as an adult is the healing required in order to not be driving that lens of I need to change you and fix you because it's a trauma response for a lot of people. Loris and Sarah says, yes, and it's often unconscious on the part of the parent, right? So it's like bringing self-awareness, like self-awareness is the first step and you can't make someone have self-awareness. They have, I mean, maybe you can for some people, but like there's a lot of people for whom, if, you know, someone making an interpretation about them is a threat. Like, so it's about, it's someone who's open to learning and collects information and applies it on their own terms. Loris says, it's so helpful to hear because internalized ableism is a constant undoing process and it's helpful to recognize that it comes from a place of love and that it needs to be corrected. Both can be true, right? It's radical acceptance.  Christina says, for sure, I have very undiagnosed neurodivergent parents that tried the fixing. Yup. Yup, yup. Just scrolling up, Liliane says, the other misleading thing is quote, intellectual disability based on IQ testing. Yeah, IQ testing is just bogus for lots and lots of, lots of people. And Liliane's also sharing specifically because of motor differences that it is like these tests are not, they're not actually valid for a lot of people. Steve says, as an educator, I have to expend a lot of energy on forgiving myself for spur rups with students I didn't understand. Steve, like let's pause there because that's like a really important piece of healing for I think a lot of people in this community, right? So like part of being on a journey of learning and unlearning together is that acknowledging that we only, we only know what we know at a given time and it does consume a lot of energy to like, I should have done different. I should like, you did what you, we all do what we do at the time because that's the scope we have. And being on a journey of learning and unlearning, now you have a different perspective. I think we all do. So thank you for sharing that. And because I think that, I mean, that resonates with me a lot. That's me, that's the story I just shared about the Luna and the watching of the videos thing. Kelly says, I remember getting really upset during my son's assessment. They kept pointing out things that I do and calling them wrong. I kept defending them by saying that he's with me all day. So it makes sense that he would pick up my traits pretty annoying that no one said anything right then. You mean in terms of that, that was an opportunity to learn that you were autistic earlier. Is that what you mean by that Kelly? Yes, okay. Yeah, because again, many, so many professionals are trained in stereotypes. And it's like we talked about at Brain Club a couple of weeks ago. All of the people who have a, this long delay in understanding how their brains work is because the professionals don't know. And when we think about presuming competence and how many professionals do not presume competence, there's like, it's a trade-off. There was this one time, somebody I was working with was having a really hard time accessing what they needed in school. And they were not being given opportunities that were within their self-determined future goals. And I remember like crying. I like cried with my patient of like the realization that they were being denied opportunities because it was known they were autistic. Like that that was a difference between me and them in that moment of like the only difference is that no one knew I was autistic. So I had opportunities and that's messed up. And just like the sheer urgency of shifting that is real. And I share Anika's observation and Allie's observation of that the idea that professionals would refer to a behavior as wrong is part of the problem. And again, the impact of that stigma, that judgment that presumed the neuro-majority, that the view that there's one correct way to play, to communicate, to be a human, like that's not a thing. And yet society all too often gives those messages. And so with and Lily ensures there's a need to educate even within the Autism Treaty, I was on an email exchange with an autistic person who was endorsing the profound autism category. But again, there is and Lily is sharing the difficulties that, you know, non-speaking or minimally speaking people, there are assumptions made about competence and it's bogus. And so, you know, when taking time to read the, you know, the writings of non-speaking individuals, you know, these are the stories being told of what the impact is of kneeling, like their not being, that competence is not being presumed. And so actually I'll mention that the book that we're gonna do a book chat in for May is the reason I jump. And that I think will be a powerful discussion. What I'll also say is that as we wrap up April and head into May, May's theme for Brain Club is the neurodivergent experiences. And so neurodivergent experiences are going to capture a lot of, we've got some prerecorded community panels talking about things like burnout. I think, Sarah, is burnout next week or the week after? Anyway, neurodivergent burnout, I think my- Burnout is next week. Yep. Yeah, it's neurodivergent burnout next week. This was requested by this group. So we're doing it and a range of other topics. So with that, I really appreciate the conversation today. Thank you all so much for coming. And if you are not, if you were not registered for Brain Club tonight, Lizzie, you know what we forgot to do? Maybe if you could put, if you'd like us to be sending you a link with the registration link for May Brain Club, if you've registered for April, you're gonna get it, you're in the system already. But if you were not registered and you, anyway, just stick your email address in the chat and we'll make sure to get you the link for May Brain Club. And Steve, I agree that chat is where the action is. But also that we, there's a lot of action in the chat and multiple ways of doing the thing that you're engaging in the chat. You're engaging by speaking out loud. You're engaging by observation because observation is a totally valid form of participation and normalizing that for all people as early as possible is part of neuro and close to community. So yes, I agree, Sarah. You're engaging by being here and you're valued by being here. So thank you all so much. Have a good night.


For the top of the mountain You know why and you follow sunny They were so they make a reference to Twitter account today Why not why are you not and today we are reacting to a famous singer I hope it's Dwight Yolkham No, he's he's an older singer. I'm sure he was a playback singer at one point But he's a really famous Indian singer read this for me, please Dwight Yolkham is not a famous Indian singer read it Bimson Joshi Korea Don't ask it. Yes. This is a very it's all in black and white, but he's a very sweet He's doing that singing. We've seen a lot of females do but I don't think we've had a Carnatic well that oh, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I don't know what it's called I agree, that's true But yes, it's in black and white. So it's just like a live. Yeah, awesome. Here we go. So ready Possessed yeah, and he was like it started over here Here you had to get it out of over here and move it over there So I don't know if it was all performance or that's just how he sings.  Yeah, we're just Expressions that were guided by what was going on musically his physicality was nothing but an extension of that I think yeah, yeah, I didn't even know like obviously the first half was basically it was just almost like just Indian music can transport you basically in the world And it was it was sometimes sad because he was going he was almost breaking this sound equipment They had at some points, you know, it wasn't him. It's just the sound equipment. They had what didn't wait Obviously so that was disappointing at certain points because I wanted to hear that because he went really high sometimes Yeah, but the really impressive thing yoga till y'all are actually singers. I don't know how he does that little I Can't even do it But like like he did look different than like people we've ever seen though before like he'll go Then he'll go like almost into a whisper.  Yeah, even for Indian music, right? Yeah, it's there's so many analogies for me with this the first one was It was it reminded me When I closed my eyes I start I saw like The bank of some body of water on a shore I've seen in India before and and as I as my as I was listening It started to do this and I immediately started to see images in my mind It reminded me of the images that Christopher Nolan does an inception How he takes the physical realm and and bends it outside of the normal structures of physics And then I was immediately reminded of the fact that and I'll wax quite metaphysical right now that the the there is something known in theory of The fine-tuning of the universe and there's a musicality in the universe that has a mathematical equation and does have musical notes associated with it There actually is a musicality that's present present in the universe with harmonic series overlays and it would it This is the closest art form that if someone were to say to me Because that's what art is art is is expressing that which is otherwise inexpressible Yeah, and if someone were to ask me who didn't know who came from a completely different dimension and universe and said What is your universe like? I would say well you should listen to that because it's it's seemingly structuralist but yet with form and And the bending yeah can sound to the untrained ears as if it's just Nonsensical meanderings. Yeah, and it's the exact opposite and the same way that there seems to be a chaos in the universe that actually has Yeah, and there's there's no upward down in the universe. There's no sideways There's no front or back and the time space continuum is a human construct. That's based on the laws of physics in this realm and This realm itself is even being held together by something called dark matter and basically 75 to 80% of the known universe is held by stuff We can't measure Which it may be completely other systems of modality and physics that we just like dogs can hear things we can't There are laws of physics and other realms and other sounds we've yet to hear and it would not surprise me if This form of artistry comes closest to tapping Into that right which is why so much of it is linked to nirvanic states and so much of the spiritual the beginning He was definitely matching each of the instruments. Oh Crazy impressive Yeah, it was a combination of mastery like the mastery of the musicianship like I said to the trained ear This is the difference you and I were talking about scotches Mm-hmm, and how you would know this being an Irish How if you don't know this There's different liquors and so you could go to something as base and and simple as all alcohol drinking a having a Budweiser I'm going to the bottom of the spectrum. Sorry if you budweiser fans And then drink your scotches And I remember when I was introduced to scotch the man who did it He gave me three different things to taste the first one I tasted They went wow that's really one of the best liquors over hat He gave me a second glass and I said what the heck because compared to what I just had it was a whole new expanse of Experience and then he got out this flask and he opened up the box and took it out of this velvet thing and set it down to pour One for me and him And we drank that and I looked at it and looked at him and I said Jedi master teach me your ways What did you just do to me? Because the difference between the three was universally Transcendent and he went eight-year scotch 15-year scotch 30-year scotch That is 30-year scotch That is just an expansiveness of artistry that to the to the To the uninitiated like you give a 30-year scotch to a kid We're gonna spit it out because they have yet to reach that place in their palate to comprehend with their experiencing Yeah, I feel the same way about this. I feel like We can barely comprehend what we just heard and as singers. Can you ever imagine sitting down for performance and singing like this?  Your chin is right here the whole time whether you're going high or low Yep, you've got clean breathing diaphragmatic. He was literally like I sit during reactions I Can't the amount of control Yeah, like faster than in the fact that he was going Yes, and some of the intervals he hit Mind-boggling He was never out of tune. No, he went and did There was anything that sounded sharp or flat because even though the the eastern modes go in between what we know on the west the notes There's a lot more Right, but it also you can still go sharp or flat Yeah, there are still spaces in between even though they have less space and he just he just there wasn't any sharps and flats It was cool. That was yeah I would love to see more from him So let us know Him or other legends that there are and there's sure there's a million, but he was so good Yeah, and you know what I would love to learn more as well about because I know I would love to learn it Exactly, I'd love to know more about the connection the mind-body spirit connection between this Music and I know that I know that Eastern music and people from India. They they get it's like, yeah we've been in touch with The universe and time-space continuum and how music is connected to it before our country ever existed So I want to I want to read and that's what I loved about when the Beatles went to India Their minds were blown because they were lovers of music and then they got to India. They're like, we know nothing Yeah, like the guy who showed me scotch was like show me your ways. I know nothing.  I do it.  Come on guys. Take a break.


ously, one of the things about western islands is that there are 20,000 people when you have a health board, a local authority and a gracing job. It would not be better if it was all within one structure. That is very much the chorus position. There is a real opportunity there. There are challenges because of the way in particular the NHS and the different organisations work, but the chorus view would be that there is an opportunity there to look at how we best provide services for, as you say, a small population and a huge geographic area. Mr MacArthur, your opportunity for any closing comments? I suppose that, in a similar vein, it is something that, within Renfrewshire, we have been attempting to do over the past couple of years, has moved forward in a much more structured way with our community planning partners in arriving at. I consolidate a view about what the total resources are available within the Renfrewshire area and how we can best use those resources to address the issues that the local communities have. It is not the same as a single organisation, but we deliver public services as what Robert has suggested. However, in terms of a wider, much more community planning-based approach, rather than each individual public sector organisation doing its own thing and planning in isolation, that is something that we are certainly trying to overcome. Okay, well thank you for putting that on the record. I think that the committee is very conscious that both of yourself as witnesses work within an environment where you are driven by not just the numbers, but the policies of the administrations of which you have to forward plan on that basis. Their questions, hopefully, reflected how you have to work their way through that process irrespective of the numbers that flow from Scottish Government, so thank you for giving evidence to our committee to help us to understand that process better. Thank you very much for attending that end agenda item 1 and we'll suspend for a short comfort break before moving to agenda item 2. We now move to agenda item 2, where we're joined with the Commission for Ethol Standards and Public Life in Scotland for the annual report on accounts 2016-17. The committee will take evidence on the commissioners' annual report and accounts. As members will be aware, the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee will also take evidence from the commissioners' annual report and accounts at its meeting next week. I welcome Bill Thomas and the Commission for Ethol Standards and Public Life in Scotland, as well as Clare Gilmore, senior investigating officer and Ian Bruce, public appointments manager of the Commission for Ethol Standards and Public Life in Scotland. I understand that there's no opening statement. I thank you for that, Mr Trobb. It's worth straight to questions and I think that we'll give him Simpson to kick us off. Yes, thanks a lot, convener. You've spent in one year £949,000, dealt with 224 complaints, only 18 of those were found to breach any sort of code. That's less than one in 10. If you do a crude breakdown based on what you've spent to those 18 cases, that's about £53,000 per case that ends up as a breach. The vast majority of cases that you dealt with were not a breach. Do you know what things are the colossal waste of money? That's a dramatic question to open up an evidence session. Mr Simpson, who would you like to respond in terms of value for money of the office? I've been asked a question of this nature before. I pointed out that one third of my budget is not even spent on conduct complaints, so I'm disappointed that that wasn't registered. Even on the crude calculation, the figures are wrong, and it implies behind it that there's an implication that the complaints that don't go forward as breaches are valueless. I'm not sure that the people who submitted those complaints would agree with that. The point that I'm making is that, not just this year, every year you'll deal with hundreds of complaints, but a tiny amount will end up as a finding of a breach. Surely, you'd have to accept that a large percentage of those complaints are simply spurious. You're looking puzzled, but the biggest number are under the category of disrespect. Disrespect can mean all sorts of things, but it could be a mild insult. I could mildly insult Mr Gibson here to my right, and he could issue a complaint that you'd have to deal with. That's costing the taxpayer money, but it would be an entirely spurious complaint. My point is, aren't we wasting a lot of money dealing with the complaints that are frankly of a trivial nature when we end up with only 18 out of 224, where you've found that there is a breach? That's in that, Mr Thomson. I think it won't be quite helpful for the committee to know, Mr Simpson, whether or not—anyone can make a complaint—it's whether there's a filtering and gatekeeping process that decides how quickly some complaints are processed and investigated, the ones that are not actioned or investigated in any greater detail. Is there a sifting system that you go through as part of that? Mr Simpson is talking about potentially spurious complaints. Is that quite helpful to know, I think, with Mr Simpson as well? Yes, convener. I mentioned last year that we had introduced a process that I called initial office assessment, and we still run that process. That is the initial assessment when the complaint comes in. Some are entirely outside my jurisdiction, they may not even relate to councillors, they may relate to things that are entirely outside the role of councillors and therefore are not covered by the code. Disrespect, I agree, can cover a very broad range of things, some of which are certainly trivial. I'm not sure that I would call them spurious. I think that if somebody goes to the trouble of making a complaint, they rarely regard it as spurious. Some of those end up with the councillor against whom the complaint has been made being suspended. I would suggest that those are not in any way trivial or spurious, but I can see that if the political will of the Parliament is that time shouldn't be spent on that, that's an option that you have in terms of legislation. We might come on to that, but there might be supplementaries. Thanks very much. It just occurred to me during that line of questioning, Bill, and thank you for coming to join us, but it occurred to me to ask you whether—I wasn't sure if there's any in your report and I don't think there was—you have got any ability to deal with particularly vexatious, vindictive, politically motivated complaints? Is there any way you have of dealing with that if you notice that that's what it is or you came to that conclusion? I don't, in terms of the legislation. I did come to the predecessor committee a couple of years back and suggest that there might be some sort of order of priority of cases, which would allow some not to be followed through. It didn't find favour with the committee, I think, it's fair to say. At the moment, I'm in a position where I'm required to investigate all complaints that come to me, regardless of the motivation. On average, over five years, 80 per cent of the complaints come from members of the public. That doesn't mean that they're all unconnected to the political process, but the complaints—we're talking about councillor complaints here—the complaints that come from councillors over that period average about 19 per cent of the total. Some of those are very clearly politically motivated and some of them may well be tit for tat. It doesn't mean, of course, that the subject of the complaint is irrelevant, spurious or trivial. It may actually be quite serious. No, I wasn't even asking about that, because what some people might consider irrelevant or trivial would consider extremely serious. However, I suppose that I'm trying to explore the issue of the more vexatious ones and whether or not there would be any recourse. Is there some way of putting people off making those kinds of complaints? I guess that's what I'm exploring. If that were to be done, I think that I would need some authority to do so, and as things stand, I don't. What I can say is that I don't have a number of regular complainers. Over the years, there have been some elected members who have put in quite a number of complaints. There tends to be also a number of complaints against those same individuals, it seems to be a way of working. I'm not in that position at the moment. It's not like petitions to the Parliament in the early days when there were people who would read the newspapers and decide, oh, I must put in a petition about this or that, and you'd get 20. We're not in that position at all. Mr Thomson, there's something you mentioned. I apologise, actually, clerking, that drew it to my attention, so I'm sorry that I missed it. One of your replies you mentioned about if you sought to prioritise or have a hierarchy of complaints—I'm not sure what the terminology would be—that that's not something in your power. You have reached each individual complaint in the same way through the same process and the same mechanism. Would you be seeking the ability to prioritise different categories of complaints in different ways? I'm just wondering. At the time I made the suggestion, the number of complaints was going up almost inexorably, and I was concerned that it wouldn't be possible to handle them all without either significant additional expenditure or else limiting those that were looked into. I think that I have a general statutory power to decide whether or not to investigate a complaint, but of course I'm covered by the general administrative law, so if I act unreasonably I would be subject to, rightly, potentially judicial review of decisions. Now, I accept that that would be an extreme position to adopt, but I don't want the office to be in a position where it's been legally challenged all the time and spending a lot of effort and money defending or responding to legal challenges, rather than what we do at the moment, which is filtering complaints and only investigating those that appear to have substance. That's helpful. I've got a couple of questions I want to ask, but I can hold them back. Other committee members want to ask any questions at this point, Mr Gibson. About credibility and consistency, two MSPs sitting next to each other both fail to declare an interest, somebody watching on telly at home decides to raise a complaint about one of those members not declaring an interest, but doesn't raise the issue about the other one who's also failed to declare an interest perhaps on the same issue. I've corresponded to you with this, as you know, and you will investigate the person where there's a complaint being made about it, but if the other person has not been complained about, even though that person has failed allegedly not to declare an interest as well, that just doesn't even get considered. Where's the consistency? How's the credibility of the system and such a thing? Surely you investigate all cases where this is supposed to have happened, or none, rather than just, well, maybe complained about that person, so they can just, you know, no bother declaring an interest, whereas somebody complained about you, so we will investigate it. By the way, we'll take eight or nine months to do it. And I was in my case, yeah, and I'm really... I'm serious, I'm really, really embittered about it, actually, to be perfectly honest with you, actually about the whole process. Right. You know, but I will not get into any detail, but that's the crux of it, you know, two people do the same thing, but one gets investigated and one doesn't. So, Mr Thomson, reflections on that? First, a lawyer's answer. The second person allegedly did the same thing. It may not have been investigated to the point where it's been established. And I think it's probably the case with most regulatory systems outside totalitarian states that it is the thing which come to the... things which come to the attention of the regulator which are investigated. I don't... If you wished my role or somebody else completely different to be to go around investigating any potential breach, they would have to operate in a completely different way. I'm obviously familiar with Mr Gibson's circumstances, and I'm not going to go into the detail of that. I understand the reason why he's irritated by it. But I think it's quite a step from the system that we have at the moment where anybody can make a complaint, which I appreciate may mean some are spurious to use, Mr Simpson's word, to one where the regulator effectively goes looking for trouble and investigates things. I mean, to be blunt about this, there is nothing stopping somebody in the position that Mr Gibson felt himself to be in making a complaint about the other person. Can I, Mr Gibson? I actually have a supplement I'd like to ask on this specific question, but it's very personal to you. Would you like to explore this further? I'm just... I'm sorry, but I wouldn't be prepared to make a complaint about someone that I don't feel is worthy of investing huge amounts of public money. And particularly given that these things happen in the chamber, you know, at least once a week, sometimes more than once a day, and the president officer says that's a matter for the individual member. You know, so there's no way I would complain about a member, given that that's the circumstances when it happens in the chamber, frankly. If others agree with that, why would there be any expectation that I or some successor to me would investigate it? My view there wasn't. So I just wondered, can we take it to the general away from the specific? Let's assume one of us in here is asking a line of questioning and there's a direct interest we have that we don't declare, maybe deliberately, maybe just oversight, and a complaint comes in. You would then have a duty to investigate why that wasn't declared. But there could have been, there's now five members left at this committee just now, and three of the five of us could have done the same thing at the same meeting. I'm just wondering in terms of consistency, Mr Thomson, whether there could be a permissive power given to yourself to make sure that the environment that you actually investigate the general context of that debate to see if there is more than one person. So you actually investigate the conduct of all members at that particular meeting. There must be a way of getting a general context to this rather than one person being singled out for specific targeting. So that's probably a crazy idea that I have suggested, but the expression I did use was more permissive powers to investigate more widely. In other words, if a complaint doesn't come in and it comes to your attention in the course of an investigation that there was four or five elected representatives that didn't declare interests for whatever reasons, surely for consistency purposes, you should look at that in the round rather than focus on one individual. We could maybe get an answer to that one, and then you could come back. It's not a power that I am seeking. It would cost money. That's a pretty short answer, so we're definitely going to come in and ask it differently. Can I ask it differently? If you were then investigating that one person, but in the course of your investigation, you were aware that the other four had done the same thing, would that then reflect on the way that you dealt with the complaint? I think that that would be a circumstance that I would narrate when I'm reporting. Remember, I don't make the decisions, ultimately. If we're talking about MSPs, I report to the SPPA committee of this Parliament, and I would expect if that had come out and if I had reported it, which I think I would have to do, I would expect that to be taken into account by the committee when looking at it. When we're dealing with councillors, I have actually been in the situation where I've encountered something investigating one complaint. In the particular circumstances, the actual complaint wasn't substantiated, but something else had happened, so I reported on the other thing that was uncovered in the course of the complaint. Even though the person wasn't complained about in relation to that? Well, they were complained about, and I'm behind to say that it wasn't hugely welcome when I did. So, if someone makes a complaint against me for pronouncing the Gaelic for Western Isles wrongly today and you go, oh, that's just ridiculous, really out of order, aha, but that Doris one in the general research into relation to that, I've found something else he's done, that would then go forward. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I misled you, convener. It wasn't as wide as that. It was more like to take your example mispronouncing some other word. It was a related issue. Yes. I think what we're trying to tease out is the consistency aspect of it, and that's incredibly difficult. Before we move on to other lines of questioning, anyone else want to come in relation to this? The types of complaint you get then, because they have changed a bit. In general, they seem to be going down, but in particular, looking at complaints by category, in relation to miscontact on individual applications, which I'd like to explain a little bit more about those types of cases, it would appear that that continues to show significant decline from 2013-14-97 down to, in the last, well, 2016-17 anyway, just 15. So, some comments on the types of cases you're getting and why you think the pattern of trend change may be altering. 2016-17, I think, saw what I hope was the final blossoming of complaints about disrespect. They reached their highest level at that point. They've gone back down this year, this year to date. The percentage of complaints about failure to register or declare an interest remains fairly constant. From time to time, there are complaints about breach of confidentiality. There tends to be a handful of these each year. They can be quite serious, because it can be information about sensitive personal information, or in another case, the Standards Commission themselves decided that it wasn't serious at all. It was information in a board paper, which was going to be public after the weekend, although it was confidential at the time. Misconduct on individual applications has involved, recently, counsellors making representations on their own behalf in relation to either their own planning application or a planning application that had a direct impact on them, which, of course, is wholly inappropriate. That has significantly fallen, then? That's the thing, Stan. Do you think that this is how we get beneath the figures? In one respect, you could say that it's a good thing that complaints are falling. That could mean that elected representatives are getting it right and more consistent in their approach to public life. It could mean that there are less fixations complaints coming in, or it could mean that there is less awareness of the complaints mechanism and therefore people aren't exercising their rights to make complaints. I suppose that I would be keen to know what your explanation of that trend would be. That is a guess, and it feeds back to the initial line of questioning. I think that the disrespect complaints—the blossoming of them, as I put it—was down to the impending local government election and, for that matter, Scottish Parliament election. Out of the almost 100 disrespect complaints over the last four years, 57 of them relate to things that have been said in meetings. Those are people taking exception to what has been said by, in almost all cases, another councillor at a meeting. The next biggest category was on social media. Generally, there was a mixture between councillors and councillors and members of the public. In misconduct in applications, there have been a couple of councillors who have chosen to make their position very clear in advance of a decision being made and who have then gone on to take part in the decision. With regulatory applications, that is against the code. I am presuming that they did so for political reasons in order to represent their constituents, but it is not the way that the code is drawn up and they find themselves in trouble. I am going to return to both of you in relation to the disrespect aspect, so let's sit in the course of a council meeting or a parliamentary meeting or our online Twitter feed or Facebook discussion. If there is more than one elected representative in that forum and let's just say for lack of a better expression that they are all given as good as they get, but only one complaint comes in about one, should you not really have the power to investigate all of them in that context, would it not be seen as odd that you didn't do that? Maybe this is cowardice on my part. I have no desire whatsoever to plough through three or four hours of a council meeting and make pronouncements on the appropriateness or otherwise of all of the interventions made. I think that has to be self-policed. I accept that, but by definition it's not been self-policed if one person in the public gallery says, Mr Doris, Mr Simpson, Mr Gibson, never Mr Stewart of course or Ms Smith was acting in a marillous unbecomming of an MSP, they are getting reported, but actually there was a, absolutely, and I would encourage to go back to the back catalogue of committee meetings and investigate them also at the same time, but the point I'm making is that it would seem odd that if in the course of looking at the conduct in that meeting, this was a heated meeting, they were all giving it a bit of a welly, quite frankly, Mr Thomson, but they completely only came in about one person, therefore we're only investigating one person. The circumstances you're describing probably would not be reported as a breach, so those which are reported as a breach are circumstances in which somebody has stood out. And I can't believe I used expression, they're all giving it a bit of a welly, I do apologise, Mr Simpson, do you want to continue on some of this? So I was going to go on to speak about the code of conduct, but I think Mr Gibson might want to... Yeah, I was just going to ask about the street focus, and how would you... To define disrespect, because what is disrespect to one person might be just a robust exchange of views of other, if you're not threatening someone, you're not swearing at someone, you know, how do you really define that? It's a fair question and it's quite difficult to answer, and it's made further complicated by the enhanced right of freedom of expression on matters to do with politics and public administration under article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which comes up in these cases. So there's no straightforward answer. I don't really want to go into specific examples, because I feel I would be picking individuals unfairly, but there have been very bad taste attempts at humour. There's no straightforward answer to this. There's one European case in which the person who accused the mayor of a town of embezzlement was held by the court to be within their rights under article 10. So it can even be accusations of criminal behaviour, which may be within the limits of freedom of expression. So the ones which I have reported tend to be personal, clearly abusive or in extremely bad taste for some specific reason. But it's subjective rather than objective? Of course it's subjective, and thankfully it's not just my judgment, because I'm reporting to the Standards Commission who don't always agree with me, but then I think that's a strength in the system, albeit there's a cost involved in it. Thank you very much for that, Mr Simpson. Yeah, so you mentioned counsellors who have publicly expressed a view on, I'm presuming, planning applications, and who then go on to take a decision on that. This is at the heart of the code of conduct for counsellors, which I understand is being potentially revised. So have you had any discussions with the Scottish Government around that? The Scottish Government sought my views on one particular proposal, which was to relax, I'm sorry, it's a particularly tricky thing, but there's a dispensation for counsellors appointed to certain other public bodies when they're considering things that might affect the council itself. So I was consulting about that. My views were that if they were commenting on a regulatory matter in which the council had an interest, the dispensation should not allow them to participate. I think that we have been talking about declarations of interest. As I understand the code, one of its objectives is transparency and making sure that people who have a vested interest in a decision are not then participating in taking it. That's the way that law is at the moment. If you go back to the original thing that I mentioned, where counsellors will express a view on a planning application, why should that debar them from then going on to vote? It's always mystified me this about code of conduct. The theory, the law, requires that decisions on planning applications for that matter, other regulatory applications such as houses and multiple occupation, taxi licensing or whatever, should be based on all of the relevant facts and should not take account of any matters or considerations that are not material. So a counsellor representing views from his or her constituency in advance of being addressed on the subjects that are material may well be reaching a view based on one side of the story. If they then carry that forward into the decision making process and vote on that basis, they may have failed to take account of some material facts. Or may not have. You could express a view, let's say a couple of months out, when an application is first made, you express your initial view. That then debars you from changing that view when it comes to a meeting. It's an absolutely absurd situation. But in any case, the discussions that you've had with the Government is up here to be have been quite narrow. That suggests to me that they are not looking at a wholesale review of the code of conduct. Would I be right in thinking that? That's my understanding, convener. Do you think that they should? Do you think that it's time for a refresh? There are parts of it that I think could be improved. I have said that before. I don't want to take too much time. The particular problems seem to me to be paragraph 314 and 315, which relate to confidentiality, which are not very well expressed. They are causing quite a lot of difficulties. In part 5, which is on declarations of interest, there are circumstances—well, there's a thing called the objective test, which I'm sure Mr Simpson is familiar with—which is supposed to apply when councillors are deciding whether or not they have to declare an interest. It appears, I can't remember quite how many times, but it's five or six times in part 5 of the code and it's expressed differently on some occasions, which I think is not at all helpful. Although I haven't been asked this, I do think that part 5 is quite difficult. It's becoming more difficult as councillors are involved in other bodies where there may be conflicts of interest, for example integration, joint boards. There was one error in the code. It referred to being reminded annually about declaring interests, whereas the regulation requires it done within a month. I believe that's one change that is going to be made. I have an issue about the key principles appearing up front. The statute requires them to be there, I accept that, but they are given a prominence by being at the front. A problem that we had certainly when I started in office was that a very large percentage of the complaints just related to the key principles, and therefore weren't specific to any of the rules that can be broken. You cannot contravene the key principles in terms of the code, and I think that's probably right. Under the initial office assessment process, if somebody simply makes a complaint that councillor so-and-so has failed to show respect under the key principles, we will ask them for the detail of it so that we can then decide whether it might or might not be a breach of a specific rule, so we don't just leave it there and reject it. We do actually explore it. The revised code will come before this committee, so it sounds from what you're saying as perhaps we ought to be looking at the code as a whole, rather than just focusing on one narrow area. In an ideal world. That's our job. If particularly directed is to one part of the code that you think would require specific attention if that's something that we were to do, which might be helpful as well. Two parts. That's the convener, part three, a couple of paragraphs there, and part five. The most complicated bit is probably part seven, which is the thing Mr Simpson was referring to in terms of the obligations on councillors in relation to planning. That is quite difficult. Another area of difficulty which is of interest particularly to councillor officials is an XC to the code, which deals with the relationship between councillors and officials. There's a particular paragraph in there, paragraph 20, which says that councillors must not comment in public on the conduct or capability of officials, which as it stands, if you take it literally, is nonsense because it means you can't say for example that Jane Williams has done a wonderful job in doing such and such. We can see that, we can see it on the record right now. You can do so. It's not in the MSP code, but it is in the councillor's code, so it's interpreted as being councillors should not publicly criticise officials. That of course becomes difficult to reconcile with the scrutiny role of councillors and also with article 10 of the CHR, so that's a bit of a problem area. Write it, for example, restrict councillor's ability to scrutinise and analyse certain key documents that the council has produced because of the fact that you could be suggesting that the quality of the document produced wasn't up to a standard and didn't stand scrutiny. Could it restrict that element? There are people who think that it could. I don't think legally that it can because of article 10, but I think that it's problematic. That would certainly be worried. Mr Simpson, is there anything else that you want to add to that? Alexander Stewart. With the recent focus that we've seen on harassment, bullying and harassment of a section nature, where are you in this process and how do you think that you're going to be affected in the way that people may make complaints and the role that you will have going forward to ensure that the commission has a piece of work to do with this process? Do you see yourself actively being involved in this or are some views and opinions to be useful? Okay. The initial office assessment would identify whether the complaint appeared to be of a nature that it could be a breach of the criminal law. In those circumstances, we would refer it directly to the appropriate authorities, so we wouldn't be involved in that kind of a complaint at that stage, but we could be involved again after any criminal process, whatever that might be, has been concluded. It would be possible for there to be circumstances where there was an absence of proof beyond reasonable doubt, which is the criminal standard, but it could still be considered to be a complaint to be taken forward on the civil standard on a balance of probabilities, so it is theoretically possible that we would be involved. The basis for any involvement, despite the comments that have been made about it so far, would be the requirement to treat people with respect. I wasn't wanting to go there before, but that is an area of disrespect, if I can put it that way, which could develop. Going back to comments and questions that have been made earlier about things being spurious or trivial, attitudes to conduct of that nature are changing for the better. Things that might have been viewed as trivial or even spurious some time back would not now. That is a good thing. It is possible that, if a complaint of that nature could come forward, there has been one public hearing in which the nature of the disrespect was an attempt at humour that involves sexual innuendo, and the cancer in that case was suspended. That is unusual in my experience to date, but does that give you a flavour of where I think it might go? As I say, in the current climate, there are bound to be issues that come forward. I have no doubt that you may have to deal with that in your capacity, depending on how that is perceived. When you talk about bullying and the officer level and the counciller level, how information is given out, there needs to be that co-operation between the councillor and the official about what information they require to have to fulfil their role, and sometimes that can get quite heated depending on the political nature of sometimes it becomes, depending on if that sort of meeting or that sort of group and where exchanges take place. I think that, because the floodgates have opened in some respects in other professions, there may be some more coming in our direction and in this direction because of the nature of the job that they are involved in. That will have an implication potentially for you going forward. I agree. It was something that would have been inappropriate for the committee not to raise given recent events over weeks and months now. We are just seeking clarity that it is not missed by yourself, your following events, your making sure that your office is prepared to act as it should, should there be an increasing complaints in this area and that you are sensitive to it. We do not expect to hear anything other than, yes, of course you are, but it is an opportunity for you to put some of that on the public record this afternoon, really. Yes, of course. I hear my office are following things carefully. I should say that our role is to investigate, assess and report. We have no counselling skills. That is the only caveat that I would make at this stage. I am not quite clear what you mean by that and taking it forward, but what I wanted to ask was councils are quite macho places. In your report, you talked about representation on boards and, quite rightly, that is something that we discussed in Parliament last week and it is something that we can have some degree of control and influence on. However, in terms of representation in councils at elected member level, that is something that political parties, for instance, have to take on board. However, because of that, I think, there may be, with this now being highlighted, a cultural shift, if you want to call it that. You mentioned earlier that you would refer things directly to the police, but that would be in terms of sexual harassment that was criminal behaviour. However, there is, of course, sexual harassment behaviour that is not criminal. When you say that you are not involved in counselling, I am not quite sure what you mean by that. I would also like a bit more clarification. I can give an example. Myself, as a trade union rep a number of years ago, I had to raise an issue with someone about a calendar in their office. The way that I raised that was that I refused to partake of the meeting that I was invited to until the calendar was removed, at which point I would then come back. However, I take it that it would be something that could be referred to that would not be criminal behaviour, but it would be something that you might deal with if someone complained about something like that. When you say that you are counselling, what did you mean? Well, it depends. I am simply stating that the role that I understand my office is to play is to investigate and to do so impartially. I was asked previously what support that we give to people who make complaints. There is a difficulty if you are meant to be an independent investigator if you are perceived or attempting to give support to one side in the process. Although we will investigate to the best of our ability, that is all that we can do. Can I follow up on that? Can you give impartial advice on signposting everyone to different organisations? Is that possible? You can maybe get around it that way. Almost out of time, just final couple of questions in relation to this particular issue. I am absolutely right, Mr Thomas, that it is an appropriate and investigatory role that you have in an independent one of that. Counselling is not part of that, but would you seek to develop links with those agencies that provide that kind of thing to signpost individuals, both complainers and complainants? That might be something that would be appropriate or perhaps all. I am checking if someone is giving a statement to one of your team, they would have the ability to have someone supporting them and advocating for them in the room at that point, in terms of that process. A bit of light and shade to maybe the earlier answer might be quite helpful just before we end this particular line of questioning. We have already started to consider which bodies of individuals we might think of having some link with in order to be able to refer people if appropriate. People can be supported if we are interviewing them. That is already the position, and we state that if we make contact with people. I suspected that that would be the case, Mr Thomas. I wanted to give the opportunity to put that on the public record here this afternoon. Are there any other questions? Are there any additional comments or observations, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Thomas, before we close this evidence session? No, thank you. I thank you and your team for coming along here this afternoon also for your weight, but we now move to agenda item 3, which is draft budget, excuse me, 2018-2019, which we have previously agreed to take in private, so we now move to private session.


Hi everyone, Sean with jaspyscasebrakes.com here doing 2019-2020 mini contenders optic two box break pick your team number 29 where we're giving away the pelicans all you have to do is have two or more teams so the way it works we sold all the spots except for the pelicans so if you bought two or more teams in this break you get entered buy two get one entry four teams two entries six teams three entries so on and so forth if you only bought one team you would not be entered for the pelicans but good luck on the team you got so to figure out how this is gonna work here's the list of customers and their teams we're gonna copy this list over just the customers to a new sheet we're gonna alphabetize that list and see how many people got multiple spots so James Connell with four gets two Lewis with two gets one Nick with eight gets four Russell with two gets one Sean with four gets two and zoom in with eight gets four there we go so we've got 14 so let's go ahead and put that into the randomizer here and name on top after a five and a five ten gets the pelicans one two and 10th and final time congratulations Lewis you got yourself the pelicans in this break ten times on the randomizer ten times on the dice and now the randomizer worked out for you now we just need the boxes to cooperate cool so let's print and rip so you can see up here we have four boxes left all marked pick your team one on top four on the bottom we got to figure out which boxes we're gonna do so we're gonna do a random number generator real quick come over here back to random dot org so we're gonna go one through four and do it twice see which ones it generates for us box three and box one let's kick back over here so one and three so there you go so those will be for this break here these ones will be for break number 30 those are the last from these are all from the same intercase and that's excuse me that is in the store now there's our final list good luck everybody box number one we got ourselves a redemption to start get your guesses in good luck everyone first up Pascal Siakham winning ticket for the Toronto Raptors and James Connell zoom in knows the number I know who he's open for James Connell Toronto Raptors this is nice playing the numbers game 50 points Giannis on to Tocumpo cracked ice the Milwaukee Bucks and Nick Stover no numbering but beautiful card Donovan Mitchell season ticket for the Utah Jazz Nick Stover Kemba Walker season ticket silver Boston Celtics Nick Stover Devin Booker season ticket red for the Phoenix Suns Sean Matt which one Joey the next one number 30 we're doing 29 right now I just loaded 30 but I'm sure there will be there's a chance there's 37 people in the chat we've done more with less people oh why not same thing just needed to sell out 37 people watching listening right now rookie season ticket red which I don't on the auto I don't know if that's numbered or not 108 Admiral Schofield for the Washington Wizards and Sean Matt some of the nicest penmanship in all of the basketball I know zoom in so close you need a 106 hit 108 we still got one more shot simon I know you all Joey one thing Joey does picks the one day this week I'm not gonna be here to show up this week apparently historical slams Isaiah Ryder for the Minnesota Timberwolves Sean Matt it's gotta give you a hard time say we're friends and you find out the one day I'm not gonna be here lottery ticket Jackson Hayes the New Orleans Pelicans and Lewis probably I assume so I don't know what next week looks like yet John Wall season ticket Washington Wizards Sean Matt are you guessing zoom in or did you see something did I kind of show something I didn't I didn't look so I don't know Fred Van Leet season ticket Toronto Raptors James Connell I always thought it was Van Fleet I thought it was VAN FL EET little do I know CJ McCollum season ticket for the Trailblazers zoom in no don't don't wait Joey just come in the anticipation is killing you we know and our auto and Fernay Simmons sophomore contenders for the Trailblazers and zoom in that's numbered 45 out of 125 so there's our break that was 2019 2020 contenders optic two box break pick your team number 29 pick a team 30 is in the store now and is the last two boxes from this inner case so let's get it going I'm Sean Jaspis case breaks calm thanks for hanging out and we'll see you next time