Adon nhw mewn llawer yn gweithgalaeth digon. Rwy'n gweithio i'r ddigon cyffredinol i'r ddechrau, ac ti wedi ei angen i ymgyrchu. A'r hyn yn gwneud llawer o'r annousfer, ac mae'n gweithio yng Nghymru. Fy hi i ddweithio'r gwahaniaeth, i'n gallu bod ddim yn ei hyn. Mae'n gweithio i'r ddylai'r gweithiau i'n gweithgoi. Mae'n ddefnyddio'r panel i frieinieddiol i ddweithgalaeth hwn, Feladhau, isi aill gan Ysgrifennig himselfon, онfegol wrth ddiwrnod, hefyd ar gyfer gyflym y Cymru, ond maen nhw. Mae'r gwaith i fynd o'r modd, mae'n teimlo'n gwirionedd, mae'n nodw i'n meddwl i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i'r reliant ffordd y Comunsigol Plynydd Ysgrifennig a'i gael pwysigol. Mae'n ddweud amser y 19 fwrdd gydag fyrddau sydd i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i ffyrddau sydd i fynd i gael dweud I'm going to introduce them all. If anyone is on Twitter, we are hashtag capital F O, capital P 2023, if anyone wants to tweet about it afterwards. But I want to move on to our panel now, so really great that we're joined by Tabitha, Peter and Maya. I'm going to kick off with Tabitha Nyariqi, and Tabitha is a race equality charter project officer at Glasgow Caledonian University. And she is the youngest member of the Scottish Fair Trade Forum Board, which is quite an achievement, I think. So we're really going to look forward to hearing from you later.  Next, we've got Maya Chamonges Muznoska, and she is from the African Caribbean Asian and Mixed Heritage Association, which she's chair off. But she's also part of the Kenyans in the Highlands. And I did check out before we started that it's the Scottish Highlands. So it's great to have you here as well today. And then last but not least, we're going to have Peter Jackson, who's Executive Director of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs. To go through everyone's CV, it would take me some time. So I've just given you the headlines here, but you'll be able to access all this kind of information online. What I want to do is to just kick off and say why it's good for us to be here today and why it's important. We are going to try and have some key questions, because for me, the idea is that we have a good discussion, and then we all think, what do we do afterwards? And that's us on the panel, but it's also you in the audience. And I'm going to ask each of the speakers to just think about two or three questions. I'm going to get them to kick off by saying what does global citizenship mean to you? How important is it that Scotland does aspire to be a good global citizen? And what have we done to demonstrate good global citizenship? And what more could we do?  Over to you. So I think global citizenship to me is particularly a really good topic because I consider myself a global citizen, particularly because I'm not from Glasgow or from the UK. So I've moved here and I've been able to expand my horizon by being a global citizen and working in areas like fair trade and within race equality that really looks at the main things of what a good global citizen is. So it's being able to belong and being able to feel like you belong to something that's more than just your national sense of belonging and being able to look at the different issues and understanding that the issues globally are intertwined and we have to work together to solve them. So for me, I do find that global citizenship is very important and it's something that we have to strive for. Okay, that was very good to the point. Next up, Maia. I think for me, I would say that global citizenship is a dream or an idea that is not about an individual or about a nation. It's our joint responsibility to address global challenges and to be able to act and promote the wellbeing of others. And I think for me, I would say it's more about being each other's keepers to ensure that we're addressing issues of class, we're addressing issues of... So it doesn't take into consideration your status or your creed, your nationality. It just looks at you as a human being and what can I do or what can we do to ensure that we're looking out for each other and we're being each other's keepers. Okay, and Peter, do you want to kick off? Those are excellent responses and I probably will only just rephrase them. But for me, it's about, I think, thinking about our problems, humanity's problems as being interconnected and global. And most of the big questions we're facing now are questions that require a solution across national borders, across continents. Because if we don't start thinking in terms of the key problems we face in terms of climate, especially but a host of other issues, as problems that are shared with the rest of humanity, I don't think we're going to get anywhere in trying to solve them. Yeah, and I think you've just mentioned global crisis. I mean, for all of you, we need to be doing global citizenship now, don't we? But we've got a cost to living crisis, a climate crisis. Is there a way we can join up some of our thinking so that we actually get some practical actions in Scotland so that we actually do deliver as global citizen? Any of you have a thought on that? Yeah, absolutely. I think there's many, many ways. We can come together and we can look at how we are doing our education, how we are educating our young people to be able to look at this crisis and being able to involve them while they are young. And being able to listen to grassroots movements who are looking to make a difference as well. I know the cost of living crisis has affected a lot of self where the funding is going in terms of what Scotland could be doing in terms of helping the global south or other global countries. But just being able to find ways to work with the young people, I always speak about young people because it's always nice to have them in the room. And just being able to also look at some of the laws, our politicians are looking at in terms of immigration and making them more accessible to other people to be able to come and build our nation and make it a bit more diverse in terms of multi-culturism, which builds and embraces and makes sure that we can fight all these issues that are happening at the moment. Peter, can I go to you next? Because I know that you have done some research and it would be interesting about how we practically build on what people think and then get some more action. Sure, sure. I am part of this entity called the Scottish Council on Global Affairs. One of our chief missions is to raise awareness, raise understanding, raise the level of debate about international relations, broadly defined global affairs, broadly defined in Scotland. It's one of our key missions. And as part of it, we wanted to understand how Scottish people understood what it means to be a global citizen, what it means to be an actor in the world. I mean, there are limitations to Scotland's ability to act in the world because constitutionally international or foreign policy is a reserved issue. But there are lots of ways that Scotland can make a contribution. But we wanted to understand and we wanted to compare Scottish attitudes with English attitudes and see if there was a difference in where.  And we thought either, it tends to be a little pessimistic, Scottish attitudes to things like climate justice, refugees, transitional justice in areas of conflict were not quite as positive as they'd been represented in the media often. And what we found was rather than Scottish attitudes or else we figured that Scotland would be more positive towards global citizenship as a big concept than, for example, England would be. But what we found was, in fact, there were high levels of support for these key issues of global citizenship both in England and in Scotland. There wasn't much difference, which was very encouraging. I'm glad to hear the support in the audience for that as well. It was very encouraging to us, but also a bit of a surprise and maybe made us think that we'd been a bit too cautious or pessimistic and we'd underestimated levels of support for thinking about the world outside Scotland and thinking about key issues of human rights and climate justice and energy and things like that. So it was very encouraging. Good. OK. Maya, what are your thoughts about what more we can do given that you've got those other crises going on? How do we still be a global citizen and make the real difference we need to do in Scotland? I think we need to have conversations within our own local communities. We just have to go back to basics. I think it's also very important to take into consideration, as we've talked about the young people, the young generation, and seeing the influence that they have, but also to ensure that the citizens, not just the residents, but the citizens are also hard when it comes to issues to do, especially with funding and international funding, and also making sure they're hanging as much as we're supporting international projects. We're doing a lot of humanitarian development projects. There's something on the ground that's being done to support people on the ground and people in a local community. Ensuring that, as much as we're supporting the international programmes, we're not forgetting about the rural communities that seem to be forgotten. If you're not in the central belt, you seem to be forgotten and you're constantly fighting and your voice is not heard loud enough. So have those conversations with the people who are also on the ground. I think that's a really important issue about being embedded in communities. We've got lots of organisations of direct links, so we'll maybe come back to that one. The next question I was going to start off with you, Tabitha, because you're part of the Scottish Fair Trade Forum. What can we do on an individual level? We've talked a bit about communities. Is there stuff that we can do on an individual level and community level where we can deliver as global citizens? Absolutely. There's loads to do. I think first and foremost is educate ourselves. I think once you have the knowledge about the issues and what needs to be done, it's the best place to start. We've also spoken about the economic crisis, so I know a lot of things like the Scottish Fair Trade Forum, need funding for certain activities or all these grassroots programmes, need funding as well. You've just been able to donate to these things. It could be donating your time, your skills, your money if you do have it, just to be able to support this work that's happening. A lot of work that's happening within our communities and within organisations like the Fair Trade Forum that just need support and need the manpower to be able to push this work forward. Also, when we're looking at how we're, again, I always go back to the youth, how we're engaging the youth in our campaign and how we're helping them use social media to get the word out there and being able to show what's happening. Not only in Scotland, but outside Scotland as well and being able to share good practice with other countries and being able to bring that in so that we are all global citizens solving the same problem. Also going down to how we vote and the policies that we are voting for will be a really, really good thing. Think about who are you voting for? What are you voting for? What are we talking about? What are we bringing into our policies? What are we asking our MSPs to do as well when we ask them for what their objectives are for the year or for the time they're in power? So being able to have all those things together is a really, really, really good place to start and also looking at how our institutions of education are also educating our students and making sure that whatever their teaching is not only just about Scotland but it's about out of the world and how we can work together to impact the world in general and work together to make our nation a better place because that's the only way we can get to a place where the world is benefiting from all of us being global citizens. I think the point you make about individuals and communities and then local politicians is important. We've got a cross-party group on fair trade and during Covid we did a really impactful session because we spoke to farmers in Palestine and Malawi and Kenya and we weren't in the room because it was Covid. Neither were they but we were able to communicate and it was just really empowering hearing about what difference it makes when you buy coffee in Scotland that's fair trade. What impact it has on them or if it's chocolate. All the different things that you can buy that are fair trade and one of the things we could maybe do more of is use our public sector purchase to buy more fair trade. That would have an impact. So things like that. Absolutely looking at things like that and just being able to also go back to social media and being able to show what you're doing and highlight all the good work that's happening because it's very, very important because there's a lot of good things that are happening particularly when you look at fair trade. There's a lot of small groups doing a lot of things but they're not sharing good practice as well so you could find that the one public sector is really good at fair trade but one is not. So trying to share that practice and being able to also challenge each other to make that change and being able to start small as you grow as well. Do you want to come in on that issue as well? I feel like she's looked at my notes. She's saying what I'm saying. I was going to say but definitely the education side of it and when we're talking about education on a local basis and also on a national basis I think it's very important that our actions on a local basis are able to be mirrored on a national basis. It's one thing for me as an individual to want to do something to protect the environment and then someone else is doing the total opposite. It's one thing for me to say I'm going to walk to work today to show that I can save the environment and then someone else who's saying I'm going to do the same thing but I'm going to drive and I'm going to fly and instead of walking the 10 minutes I'm just going to take my car there. So I think it takes a collective we have to understand. First of all apart from me just saying this is the definition of what a global citizen is. People need to understand from their own perspective what it is and what they can do to actually make the necessary changes and also being able to engage, embrace and learn about other cultures and the diversity within Scotland. Scotland is extremely diverse and because of that diversity comes a lot of knowledge and we can utilise the knowledge to be able to absolutely make Scotland boom. But again it goes back to being able to have these conversations with people on the ground and advocating for education from different perspective. Advocating for education especially through multiculturalism and to raise global awareness from the ground up. So you've both talked about education. You actually work at Glasgow Caledonian. You're at Glasgow Uni in your other day job. So there's something about education that's coming up and about young people in particular. So are we thinking schools, colleges, universities? You've also meant social media. Do you want to just continue that point there, Maya? I'm definitely going to say, you know, I've had this conversation in the past with people when we talk about Scotland's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and it's a conversation that seemed to happen and people think that we should have this conversation at secondary school because they think, you know, it's only palatable to kids at secondary school level whereas I think these are conversations that we need to start having at preschool. We need to have this conversation so that kids are already engaging in this conversation so that when they go to primary school they have an understanding of what it is and then when they do go to secondary school it's easy to pick up on the subject because they already know what it's about and it's a subject that they have grown up with just as you would teach about history of any other thing. Don't miss out on this other part of history but from a very, very young age because I think once you get to 12, 13 you try to introduce something. It's really, really difficult to try and get through to young people when they've got to a certain stage. They already know what they want to do or have an idea of what subjects they want to do and the kind of way they're going. But if you start at a stage where we're talking preschool level, I'm an EYP. So if you're talking from a preschool level and you start having those conversations, they're not only having the conversations at school, they're then going home and having the conversations and having conversations with parents and grandparents. And there's a lot of history that's hidden there but because we're not having these conversations with our young kids at that stage we're missing history from stories from grandparents and uncles and aunts. We're missing all that. So I think the education level, it doesn't need to wait until secondary school at university to be having these big conversations. We can have them so that it's palatable to the young children. Okay, so do you want to come in on that one, Peter? Because you're head of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs and you work in a university. Is there much more that we could be doing at every level preschool, primary, secondary, hiring for their education? Well, for me, I think that the geographic dimension in Scotland is a kind of a particularly challenge because it's easy to come. I live in Glasgow, it's easy for me to come to Edinburgh to do an event. But what we're going to do in the coming years is we're going to offer communities outside the central belt in the Highlands and in the islands an opportunity for us to go to them and hold town hall meetings and maybe work with some schools while we're there to talk about issues like, for example, the war in Ukraine, which I think is on a lot of people's minds and to try and get a conversation going and make some contribution to maybe lifting people's understanding a bit, raising awareness. Another issue we were thinking of focusing on was migration, which is a problem that I think is not a problem. It's a challenge that I think that humanity needs to understand better and understand its drivers and its characteristics. Because while there are every year a few million people migrating to different parts of the world, like, for example, Europe or the UK or North America, but the big migration that we've seen is people moving from rural areas to urban areas. And there we're talking hundreds of millions of people every year. And that's a dynamic that is going to create further problems as well. And to understand what's driving it and to understand what's driving waves of migration caused by climate crisis, by war, to make people understand better that, you know, we don't have to listen to what the government tells us and ministers tell us about to eff off back to France. That's just so misrepresentative of what's happening. And, you know, we have to go out and have conversations just as we've been hearing abroad and not just, you know, in lecture theatres at Glasgow, Calais or University of Glasgow, but in areas where maybe these town hall conversations would do more good. So we've got, we had COP26 in Glasgow and we had the loss and damage initiative, which was great in terms of setting a new frame. It not spent much on it yet, but we've also got additional programmes in country and we've got lots of really good third sector charitable organisations. Do we need to step that up more so that we support people in country, so places like Sub-Saharan Africa who are already experiencing climate challenge of not being able to grow food? What more do we do as a global citizen to do that practical support, do you think? Have that conversation, but everyone has to be at the table having this conversation. It is really, really important that, you know, because what you don't want to happen or what is happening is you have a conversation, but someone is missing, so they do their own thing. Have that conversation with everyone at the table doing exactly the same thing. Why are we recycling? What's the importance of recycling? Why are we putting plastic one place? Why are we putting food another place? Why are we putting glasses another place?  Another council doesn't recycle, they put all their food and all their rubbish in one bag. Another one, you know, so I think it's really important if we are going to do something, especially when it comes to climate change, we're all speaking the same language. We're all talking the same language when doing exactly the same things, and it's it's little like clockwise, because if one person does one thing different, there's a domino effect to it, and which is what you were experiencing at the moment. So we need to do more good things and be more organized. More organized. Do you want to come in on that one? Yeah, but I think it's also very important to bring a lot of the global south onto the table, because I did manage to attend the COP26 and as well as the Conference of Youth as well. I was part of the delegate that was part of that, and there was hardly any global south members within the rooms or within the conversations. So a lot of solutions were being given and being approved or being uploaded, but it didn't really fit some of the solutions that would help the global south. Yes, it was a good conversation to have, but the access and just being able to have them on the table and actually talk about real issues within their countries. Because I think there's this perception where the global north will think that they have the solutions to fix the global south, whereas the solution is within the global south, they just need the help of the north to be able to come up with a solution. So just being able to sit on an equal table and have these discussions and find a way to to work in a way that works for both in a very fair and very not one is more powerful than the other. Because there's still that imbalance of power that's come post colonisation and post slavery that's still there. So looking at being able to say we are coming together as a globe, because as a globe we are dying because of climate change and all these issues. How can we work together to bring us all into a place where we are all living in a very sustainable and equitable world? OK, so we're all here in the Parliament. There's been a lot of talk about Scottish global citizenship, what you can all do as individuals. What more would you like to see politicians do to truly deliver a good global citizenship? Who wants to kick off with that one? Well, I think they could support initiatives that do many of the things that both Tabatha and Maya have been advocating, which is going out into communities and not just interested people who turn up to events like this, but maybe going into schools and underlining to students and to local communities this interconnectedness that I think in different ways we're all emphasizing. But in fact, and that's where I would only disagree with you slightly Tabatha, I don't think the north or the south have the solutions. It has to be an approach where everyone has a voice as we understand the problems. And to me, getting the conversation going and raising awareness and understanding in Scotland is I think a vital step. Just to say in a couple of minutes, I'm going to say anyone in the room got a question, a comment. So just start thinking about your questions. Do you want to agree there with Peter or? Yeah, not absolutely. I do agree. And I think maybe I didn't communicate well enough when I was speaking before, but I do agree that it needs to be an equal seat at the table. It hasn't been. It hasn't been. And that is the issue. You made that point about race. There's a point about young people. There's a gender issue. But make sure everybody's real access. On the table, yeah. Once you have everyone in the table, they're able to bring in the views from their perspective and in that way you can find a collective way to solve all the solutions in a way that works for everyone, even though that sometimes is difficult, but in a way that seems fair for everyone. Mike, you are coming in that one. What should politicians be doing? I've got a long list, but I think for me it's four main things. I'd like to see politicians committing to work with external bodies who have the same values. I'd like to see politicians be realistic with their targets and goals because I'm not sure half the time where the targets and goals come from. Some of them are achievable and some of them are unrealistic. I'd like to see politicians ensure that the resources allocated to international projects and developments have also been promoted within our own local communities, especially the rural demographics and not just central belt. I'd also like politicians to practice what they preach, especially around global challenges and to be a voice for the people that don't have a voice. No pressure. I'll have to communicate that back to colleagues, but there's quite a lot in there, isn't there? That thing about working with external bodies, that's one of the things this Parliament is very keen to do. So when we have people around the committee and we do an inquiry, we invite people to come back and actually be a witness and give evidence at the Parliament. We always have a lot of debate over targets and goals, especially climate at the moment. What is our commitment not just to have targets on climate change, but actually deliver them? That is a massive issue. And your point about resources, that goes everywhere, doesn't it? Every project needs proper funding and then the practice what we speak. So a lot of nice little challenges in there. Do you have anything you want to add, Peter, before I go to the audience? Just to say that we are living in, because I'm in a story and actually in my training, in my worldview, and we're living in a moment where populism is more pervasive and popular and practiced than at any point since the 1930s. And it's a responsibility we all have to kind of, to me anyhow, to reject these narratives about what separates us and what makes us different and how we won't have the same interests as other people and think about we have responsibilities to each other. And if we can educate people and nurture that support that we found in that survey, then it will become easier for politicians to raise taxes to spend money on projects that might not seem to the average person at the moment to be a good use of public funds, but are actually vital for our children, our future, our children. I don't mean, I'll get off my soapbox now. Okay, well we've had a really good conversation there with our three panel speakers and I want to open it out to the audience now and get you involved in this discussion.  So no pressure because there was that thing about individual people need to get involved, need to have the conversation, the dialogue. So over to you guys, who would like to kick off? Who's got a question or a comment you want to bring in? I see three people, so I'm going to start off with you first. Just as ever, if you just see your name. I wasn't born in Scotland but I've lived here 35 years and I really appreciate the fact that people are valued and people from wherever we are, gifts. I'm involved in interfaith relations, which is the Scottish Interfaith Council, but there's so much we can learn. There's an attitude among some people that are them and us, the them and us attitude and they're dependent and we are patronising. But there's so much richness in Scotland's population and we are gifts to each other. For example, over half of the faith groups live a very simple, sustainable life, vegan and they care for the earth. I was at the COP26 faith leaders summit where everybody agreed on the importance of caring for the earth for us and for future generations, all of the faith leaders, and that was the theme throughout. It was wonderful to meet some of the indigenous people from Bolivia and Peru who came up at the institute there. One of the places they enjoyed the most was the Galgale Centre, which is a very hands-on community oriented. It's about community, the values of community, of relationships, which we value during Covid particularly. Dancing and being outside Scotland, moving outside celebration and being able to grow your own food, that's an important thing. Valuing young people and valuing old people and the gifts that the older generation have in nurturing the young. That's a great start. Hi, my name is Cathy Gunn. I was born in Scotland, but I've lived overseas for the last 30 years. I was in academia as well. I worked in the University of Auckland in New Zealand. I know that the academic focus is one thing, and I think that the research is great. This is a really complex set of issues that we're talking about, but I'm going to just ask a really simple question. I will ask it of Peter, because you were the one who spoke about the research, looking about people's attitudes in Scotland and England and where they're different, and you found that actually they weren't. What would you have done if you had found that they were different? And what actually are you going to do with the information that you got from that survey? I'd just love to hear more about it. Oh, thank you. Well, it's going to be published, and the raw data will be available on our website. The Scottish Council, we're very keen. We're about to launch a membership drive, and membership's not going to be expensive, because we're hoping to attract lots of people. But the website at the moment is free, and all that data will be free, and the people in charge of the survey are finalising their report. And there's going to be a briefing to the international affairs team in the Scottish Government. I'm hoping also that a couple of the parliamentary commissions will be interested in hearing more about this as well, because I think it's fascinating. I think probably our chief interest really was to what extent are people in Scotland interested in international politics, to what extent do they feel a stake in it, to what extent do they feel that they understand some of these big questions, like, for example, what was going on in Ukraine, that was one of the questions, what's Scotland's responsibility, Scotland's attitudes towards multilateral organisations, which is a big theme that I'm very keen to promote as a way which I haven't mentioned yet. But there are a lot of multilateral organisations that Scotland would do very well, I think, to try and promote and also to have a voice within everything from the UN to the organisation for the OECD and some of these spaces where nations come together and state interests are put aside for common. To realise common objectives, I think that these are very important to support. Okay, thanks. I've got two speakers way up the back. Was it right in the very back row? Was that yourself? No? Okay. Well, then we'll go immediately where you are then, and then I've got a couple of people. We'll come back down. I suppose my question is about our level of honesty in Scotland, about how we act, how we view our own history, the connection between our domestic policy goals and our external facing reputation, and I just want to give a couple of statistics. The poverty rate amongst single parents who are from a minoritised ethnic community is almost 50 per cent in Scotland. That's almost double what it is for white people. Our thoughts around and our political narrative around the common wheel in Scotland and our connection to social justice is so far removed from our historic connections to colonialism. I think you've really touched it, both Tabitha and Maya, on the need to think about that connection to slave trade, but not just the slave trade, everything that came after it as well, and the lingering legacies of colonialism and the impact that has on people and the trauma that causes people of all colours across the world. I suppose the question, therefore, is how can we counter that productively? How can we enter into a conversation about the Ukraine war, for example, that is honest about the fact that most people are more interested in the Ukraine war than they are in the aftermath of the evacuation of Afghans only shortly before the war broke out? A relationship with refugees, depending on their colour, where they're from, is such an important thing to self-interrogate. Yet I don't see that happening in politics. I don't see that on the news at 10pm. So what do we do to counter that? How do we get that into public debate? OK. Who wants to kick off with that? I think we start with having an honest... Actually, first of all, creating a safe space for these conversations to happen. A lot of these conversations are not happening simply because, one, people don't actually understand or know enough history to be able to comment on it. And then, two, people don't want to offend. And even if they feel like they're right, they don't want to say it in case someone else says, well, you shouldn't have thought that or you shouldn't have said that. So we're not having these conversations because we don't want to offend people. And I'll give an example. If myself and Peter are walking down the street and someone is to say, oh, I saw a gentleman and a lady walking down the street. Or what did they look like? Or he was a white man and he was wearing a jacket. What did the lady look like? She was wearing lots of beads. What else? She was five foot five foot. What else? There's that thing about saying she was black and people are so scared to have that conversation. And I think we need to have the honest conversation. And the only way we can have the honest conversation is by creating a safe space and creating a platform where we can have this uncomfortable conversation. Because they're not really uncomfortable. It's just people don't know how to deal with that. People don't know how to deal with these conversations. So create that safe space where people can ask questions without being penalised. People can ask questions without being challenged. People can ask questions and receive an honest answer. You've mentioned the war in Ukraine. We cannot mention what's happening. I've not had anyone mention about what's happening in the Congo. Not had anyone mention what's happening in Libya. We've not had people mentioning what's happening in Iraq. So we're so selective about the conversations we're having. And we can't choose if we're going to be honest good citizens and not just honest good Scottish citizens, global citizens. We have to have these uncomfortable conversations in order to be each other's keepers. And the only way we can do that is creating an environment that is safe to have these conversations. OK. I completely agree 100%. And I think just to add on that, when creating the safe spaces, it doesn't need to be in an organisation. It can be with your friends. It could be with your family. It could be with somebody at the bus stop who you've had made a comment. It starts really small and it grows all about creating and having the conversation and not being scared to ask and to be corrected or to relearn or unlearn behaviour. And actually it's an unconscious bias because there is a lot of unconscious bias that we all have in terms of that. But going back into education, there's a big push to decolonise the curriculum and that's some of the work I'm working in within Glasgow Caledonia University. And looking at how we can look at the curriculum and how it could welcome having such discussions even in the classroom and being able to have that through research as well. Because when we're looking at our REF, which are our research outcomes and looking at what sort of things our research is looking at, are they looking at only issues that affect one sort of group of people rather than others? People say it becomes really hard to research because there's no peer review, because there's no one researching about a certain country and doing certain things. So also just going back at looking at such projects that are happening in higher education, like as I've said, decolonising the curriculum, trying to go through institutions and looking at institutional racism and how you're contributing to it in one way or another, or we're all contributing to it. Because there's so many little niche things that are happening within society that we're not aware of, but they do actually add on to institutionalised racism.  So it's also about going and educating yourself. I know you've said you've not seen things in the news. Stop watching or change the stations you're watching. Watch African news. They're all in English, most of them, or if not, they're subtitles. So you can go and check what's happening or what's the news in Kenya, what's the news in Nigeria, in Niger, in Libya. And then that sort of takes away the bias. So you don't only have to stick to BBC and STV and CNN and all those, because those will always sell the narrative that they want to sell about all these countries and then you'll always think negatively. So just educate yourself as well, just to add on what Maya said. Yeah, and I think I should say that my colleague Faisal Choudhury has just arrived at the very back. And by sheer chance you started talking about colonialism and the need to do more education in schools. And Faisal's been doing a lot of that, asking difficult questions and just raising the issue generally. And one of the things that I found interesting was the National Museum is now going to do an exhibition on colonialism. And it was interesting that it involved different diaspora groups in Edinburgh on what their personal experiences in their families were. So that was a point that came up right at the start about people's own families. And I think that diversity we've got in Scotland, so very good timing Faisal. If you're going to make a comment, you'll need a mic and it needs to be brief and not a speech. Because I've got two questioners that are coming down the corridor here. Thank you very much, Sarah, for giving me this opportunity to get in. Yes, I did came in good time and the point you've just raised is very important. Recently, as Sarah said, I've been raising these issues and I've been having meetings with school, colleges and universities. And I think we need to start this dialogue from very young age, from primary level, and we need to add that in our curriculum. If students know the history, they can be a better person. So I welcome any other input and I will be working on this with my colleague Sarah and other colleagues as well. So if you want to get involved with us, you're more than welcome. And thank you Sarah, thank you very much. I think it was not just primary school but preschool as well. No pressure Faisal. So Lady in Blue there, were you next? And then the Lady in Black. So Peter, were you want to come in? I'll take you next. Yeah, I just wanted to, I mean I think it's pretty, I hope I've made clear that I'm very supportive of thinking of what connects Scotland to the rest of the world. But it doesn't have to be either or in the way that you seem to be suggesting. In other words, for the same reason that Niger is of particular concern to the African nation surrounding Niger, and they've taken responsibility for trying to find a peaceful and democratic solution to the crisis there, it's entirely understandable that Northern Europe is going to be concerned with Ukraine. And I don't think it's reasonable to be critical of that or to say it's racist.  And nobody, no responsible person in Scotland is saying that. And so, I mean Scotland, whether you like it or not, it's geopolitical position. Facing into the North Sea makes security and defence a question it cannot ignore. I have to, I'm going to have to just jump in with that. So I agree and disagree a little bit with my colleague Peter here. Simply because I don't think it's anything to do with the race as such. I think it's just the omission of truth that there's a difference. When one becomes, Ukraine was such a big talking point and now Niger is such a big talking point because 80% of France relies on its uranium and 50% of the US relies on it. And so now it's become a talking point. So I don't think it's anything to do with the race element. It's just the omission of some parts of truth or just parts of a mystery that we don't get to see unless you've done a little bit more research. That information is not given to you, so you don't get to see what else can we do. You know, if you were to say, right now Niger needs support, what else can we do? You won't know about it unless the media has put something out there. The media put a lot of information about Ukraine and Scotland run out. We sent tracks of clothes and food and volunteers to Ukraine because they needed help. There is no in the news where there's been an article that says the people of Niger need help because the US has cut off their aid. Let's rally and do something. The moment we have that conversation, as honest as possible, then we're being a good citizen. The moment we have a conversation that my great-grandfather was involved in the world wars, we can then have a conversation. But the moment we choose to miss out specific people and the moment we choose to miss out specific truth, then we can't begin to be a good citizen because we're missing the parts that make us our brothers and sisters keepers. Our brothers and sisters keepers, you're not my brother because you're the same color as me. You can be the same color as me, but that doesn't make you loyal to me. You can be a different color to me and you're the most loyal person I'll ever meet. Brothers, keepers, sisters keepers is someone who is willing to risk their life because they believe that what they have to do to support you supersedes anything else. That should not look at the race, it should look at colour, it should look at humanity for as long as we have got level truth on both basis. OK, so Lady's now got the mic. Do you want to give us your name and then fire away? Hello, my name's Diana and thank you very much, Maya, for that. That was really good to hear. I'm here with my colleague Charlotte and we are representing the International Development Education Association of Scotland, of which Scottish Fair Trade Forum is one of about 23 members. My colleague Charlotte here is the chair. We work for development education centres and development education is an old phrase that now in schools they talk about global citizenship education. It was very encouraging for us to hear you talk frequently about this need for education. It's something that we've been doing for many, many years. It's something that's embedded in schools global citizenship education, but more recently the links to race equality, the links to decolonising the curriculum, that's, I would say, just in the last four or five years that that's become really important. I loved what you were saying about getting right in their early years. I think that the further education and higher education as well is those sort of ends where we can start to make the connections all the way through to build the progression on the learning. So we're based in Glasgow, our development education centre, but there is one in the Highlands, Maya, that really encouraged you to connect what they'd love to hear from you. Peter, have you found yourself doing a wee tour? Let us know because we're already working with schools, we're already doing that work. Excellent. Okay, I'm going to pass to Charlotte. So I just wanted to, I'm Charlotte, I'm based in the Edinburgh centre, but I really wanted to ask a question as well because there's a lot of talk today about education and young people, but teachers themselves don't have the knowledge, they don't have the confidence to have these conversations, they don't have necessarily the time in the curriculum because particularly the higher up they go, there's pressures of exams. So I guess my question is, and as Diana said, we've been working in this field for a while. I was working with a teacher only this week about developing an anti-racist curriculum in her school. This is like the second three-hour training she's given to it and now she's given other hours across the whole of this year to develop it. And she is kind of saying to me, my teachers do not know how to do this. They just do not know how to do this. And this is one school in Edinburgh that I have given about, I know, 12 hours of my time to in terms of training. So, and I'm one person, I can't do that to every school in Edinburgh, let alone for other local authorities who work in. So my question is, if this is going to happen, how and where and who is going to enable teachers to find the time and have the training in order for this to happen? Because it always comes down to all education needs to do it and teachers can't do everything. And if they are going to do this, how are we going to support and enable them that to happen? Who wants to kick off? There's a bit of nodding going on the platform, you'll be glad to hear. Absolutely, I do agree with you because I obviously work within race equality and I've been within the field for many, many years. So I was a student when I started working on this and I was doing it as a volunteer. And a lot of the people I was working with also were taking out of their day jobs. So it also goes down to resourcing. So like my role was created and our institution had to look for resource to get me there. So I'm able to do it full time. So it's going down to institutions actually looking for experts or people who are in the way to become experts and looking for that resource to add them there to add on to it. Because me then joining this institution has added that level of, you don't have to take five hours more off your day because I can do it because it's my day job and being able to give access. And I do agree that it is a lot to ask of teachers and educators to take off time and learn all these new skills. But it's also understanding the importance of them wanting to and not having to feel like they have to. So it's more of we want to change how we are as a people and how our next generation is taught and how they view themselves as global citizens and being able to use in many ways whatever you're already doing as an educator and maybe tweaking one book in your class or one sort of assessment you give. So it's small, small things like that that could then build up. But again, it all goes down to resourcing and getting people who want to rather than have to do it. Yep, more or nothing? Of course. I've got a different approach. And this has always been my response. If I was given the authority to do this, I would implement this straight away. Someone who works in EYP, I could totally understand your frustration because one, the paperwork, you have to write everything and it's really difficult to talk about something that you have no experience in, no lived experience. So it becomes very, very difficult to make it a personal situation. My solution and this is a challenge I'll give to our politicians who make decisions. We have got refugees. We have got people who have come into this country for whatsoever reason. They cannot access public funds. They are skilled. They have got degrees, masters and PhDs. They are waiting for their immigration issues to be sorted out. Why not use them and their skills in that department? We have teachers. We have lecturers.  We can do a PVG for you and make sure that you qualify in whatever parts you need to qualify in. And if you give us 10 hours a month to come and teach our young group around race equality or whatever you need to do about history, whatever you need to do, because you have the lived experience, that removes the pressure from that teacher who one has to go and do the research and then has to go and talk about a topic that can be uncomfortable and they don't know what they're talking about and they have to try and deliver it so that anyone who is in that room can relate.  But it's very different if it comes from another black person and I hope that makes sense. So it's easy for these are things that the government can do to utilise the resources, I'm talking about the resources that we have, utilise the resources that we've got, utilise the people that we've got, utilise the skills that we have got on the ground, get them to come and work in schools, get them to come and give talks, let them have workshops, but again, they're using their land experience and their lived experiences and also the expertise of wherever country they've come from and they can use that to deliver workshops and schools and then that removes the pressure from teachers. That's the first bit of spontaneous applause today. Not bad. And about using people's skills and knowledge, how do we do that? That's a really good point. Where has the mic gone there? There's a lady right in the front, second in here, if you want to give us your name and a question. Thank you. Irene Matthews, former educator comparatist. I would like to just endorse very much what's recently been said about educating educators. I recently had a personal experience of a couple of years at Glasgow University in the humanities course. At the time that Glasgow University was lauding itself for its attitudes and renewed interest in the aftermath of slavery and the responsibility of the university itself in utilising the profits from the slave trade in order to subsidise their own colleges on the ground in the classroom, zero. Absolutely nothing, including even a defensiveness among the professors who were teaching if you brought up context. It simply wasn't tolerated. They either didn't have the knowledge or they were embarrassed by the topics or they wanted to be specialists. This is one of the problems again. Not so much at high school and primary school level, but in and after university undergraduate courses we're finding a lot of specialisation which really does lose track. I think globalisation has a lot to do with context. We have to understand the larger context in which we're living. However, that isn't what I really wanted to ask about or mention. I'd like to come back to the idea of the media and their responsibility in somehow giving us some actual information about the rest of the world. It's wonderful that there are specialised stations broadcasting from various different countries, but our own national media, and by national I'm referring to the United Kingdom, seems to want to concentrate on catalogs of catastrophe and poverty press. So, for example, Niger, yes, is in the news right now, but what do we know about the daily lives of a person from Niger when they are not at war or they're not down on mine or they're not being assaulted in some way or another? Practically nothing, because once again, the everyday media does not offer us a vision of the world. Now, I don't know what we do about that. I would have loved to have had somebody here today in addition to this wonderful expert opinion, someone who was perhaps a little less expert and would be able to justify the lack of general contextual news about our brothers and sisters all over the world, because this focus on catastrophe does not serve anybody. The focus on history is valuable, but what's happening now? So, I just wanted to mention that I feel that our mainstream media really, really lets us down, as does some of our elite educational approach and focus, which is also way too narrow. Siri, that was a complete, another question. It kind of makes a nice point that we live in a democracy, so you get to ask devil-awkward questions that as part of the point of this is to actually have a proper discussion. So thanks for that, Irene. Anyone want to come back on that? I'm thinking about media and I'm thinking part from the Guardian newspaper there's very few newspapers give you any of this kind of coverage at all. Any thoughts anyone's got? Well, I think that one of the most important things we can do and it involves speaking across communities is focusing on a better understanding of empire. You know, I live in Glasgow and Glasgow is suffused with monuments from an imperial era and there's still, I think, a tendency even amongst, there must be amongst high school teachers to talk about teach empire as something to be proud of rather than something that was fundamentally exploitative and unjust and has had reverberating effects down through the centuries and decades that have left us with, you know, many profound structural challenges in our societies that are, I think, in many ways a product of empire. And so that's one of our aims and I really have to, I think, present another view. I'm not dismissing your experience at the University of Glasgow but I'm in the history department in Glasgow and we have a huge and thriving global history programme. We have a centre of slavery studies which was kind of from the very beginning when students arrived, you know, they're taught a different approach to empire and they're taught, you know, the meaning of slavery and how the slavery economy was far, far wider and more pervasive than we've usually understood. So I can only assure you that your experience is not. It's not. What proportion of the university students are in the history department and to what extent do you also activate conversations, et cetera, seminars across the university? Well, we try. Have you been to the Ontario Museum? I mean, there's a great, great exhibition about slavery there right now. In order to understand where we are, we have to understand how we got here. I don't understand, I mean, historians can only do history. Yesterday was history. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So there's been a lot of, there was somebody near the front here. Is that, we've moved on. Yeah. Has anyone else got a question they want to go through right up the back? Is that lady at the end of that row? Is it working? Is it? Yeah, we can hear you. Hi, I'm Amy. So I'm feeling, I've got two young people here. So my question really is, how do we engage or how are the panel engaging young people's voices in this work because there's a sense of real urgency. You know we're talking about history, we're talking about things which are, and we can talk about that for a long, long time, but you know these guys, we need to talk about what's happening now, how their voice is being included. Some of these conversations I'm very sure it's the first time that they've heard these conversations happening. You know they're 15, so why is that? And how do we, when some interest is sparked around this, how do we encourage that to keep that moving? Okay, good question. Anyone want to kick off? I'll start in one of the organisations I'm here with is a fair trade forum, and I'm glad to see Martin in the audience. And they engage with young children and bring in fair trade within education in schools. So young kids are able to participate in different fair trade activities, and I went to one a couple of years ago and it was really nice to see this really young families from kids working with rice and they're going, it's fair trade and trying to select to their teachers and to their families and just understanding how fair trade impacts on the economy and the global and being a good global citizen. So organisations are working. I think it's just more so, it needs to be more put out there that this is what's going on. And also maybe creating a platform where young people or networks for young people, I know we're working through the fair trade forum as well to get young people more engaged in our work and make it more engaging and more less formal and less serious just to get people in there. Because we do know young people are into activism and being part of the solution because you saw when, for example, Black Lives Matter happening in 2020, it was a young people leading it. When all these things have been happening, climate change, it's all been young people so they're ready to be engaged. It's just how do organisations engage them in a way that's not daunting, in a way that's not too serious or too... You can't express yourself as it should be. You're following policies and procedures and trying to make it too formal and just being able to, again, within friends groups, I think it's always good when you find friends with the same ideas and then Google and find organisations or look into your local community and find organisations that are doing all this good work. But there are organisations that are doing things for young kids. I think it's just more so advertising more of it and creating networks for young people to tap into all these. The other thing I would add is that we've also got the Scottish Youth Parliament and I know from talking to the local reps that they quite often do local events and local meetings to try and give young people that chance to have their voice heard. So there's something about... It's almost like seizing the opportunity, I think, and finding out who's doing what and then trying to mainstream it and get more coverage, all of that as well. Certainly when we get lobbied by students, they are very conscious of these kind of issues and they're starting to lobby us quite effectively, I think. So I think it's... It's trying to seize the opportunities as well with some of this stuff and try and get the change that I think everyone in the room wants us to have. I don't see any more hands up. Oh, I see one hand at the front.  I'll just answer again a little bit on the young people's side of it. With the organisation I founded, it was again simply because there's just nothing for young people in the Highlands and I think there's nothing worse when we try to tell young people what should be done and how we should be done and there's not a lot of involvement with the young people themselves. So what we try to do is have more workshops in the Highlands is only one book called Hand of Surprise on Diversity. One book and every library has got it. So we try to have workshops. We try to have dance classes. We run youth groups and we try and do as much as we can with a very limited budget because we're struggling with funding and we don't seem to get a lot of funding for stuff we want to do with the young people. So mainly workshops, mainly workshops, youth groups, crafts, storytelling, open mics, we get dance crews that come from Glasgow to come to the Highlands and do workshops with the young people and we find that that is another way for them to interact. We work with hair braiding. We do stuff with cloth making with African fabric. So if we get young designers who want to work in design, but we want to promote African fabrics, we include that in the workshops that we're working on. So we try to make our workshops more youth-focused and youth-led and let them kind of leave the way. So that's what we try to do around the young people. We're just there in the background and let them run the show as such. I see two questions now near the front. I'll take one and then I'll take the next one. Then we'll come back to the panel. Sorry, I'm sorry. I used to speak for fair trade in schools and colleges and things like that. Actually, the way I would present it is who has the power. I'd explain how the economy works, how there's these massive buying chairs and Tesco buys this and the people who manufacture things, they make decisions. But who ultimately has the power?  Because you are buying the product. We are all responsible global citizens when we make conscious decisions about what we buy. We have a tremendous amount of power in our own hands day after day just by making simple decisions. If we can get that across to our young people and if we can make them understand that the process that goes into making your shoes or making your clothing issues about climate change are connected to issues of I'm sorry to say present day virtual slavery, which exists around the world in the way that garment industry produces clothing issues of how farmers are made to pay additional money for kind of crops. All of those issues that we take for granted, handing that back to our children to empower them to become conscious consumers, that is what makes a good global citizen and that's the kind of very basic level and there are a ton of organisations out there who are willing to go and speak in schools who have this knowledge from their daily work and we're not reinventing the wheel, we're not trying to teach people something that is kind of complex or complicated it's just an understanding of this interconnectivity of how things are made, where they're produced and the kind of the way that that interacts with our daily lives and our daily decisions with everything that we buy. Yep, and then right behind I think that was a really empowering comment as you can tell by the collapse. Hi, my name is Rosa I had a question but also just wanted to make a brief response to what you just said which I think is a really good point and obviously consumer decisions do have a big impact on what companies do and what products you see and whatnot but I think one of the issues there is that unfortunately a lot of the ethical choices end up being quite prohibitively expensive for a lot of people or they're not available in certain areas or some things where it's like oh eat better, it's like if you do it right it's very inexpensive, you can eat vegetables for cheap. Some people live in places where they can't buy vegetables, they don't it's not feasible for them and sure it's cheap but how much time does it take to prepare this, that's another thing if you have a bunch of kids if you're working multiple jobs even if something costs the same even if a meal costs the same as a fast food thing what's the time cost and stuff like that there's a refillary plastic free shop by where I live and I looked at how, for some things it's like okay that price is reasonable but I looked at how much would it cost me to buy pasta there and it would be like three or more three or four more times expensive than going to little so I'm not poor but I'm still like that's not something that's available to me at the moment so this isn't to be like a reign on your parade like nobody can do that, it's not realistic but I think it's something that isn't in the conversation as much as it should be for example sometimes you have people saying oh well you know like minorities or migrant communities they don't care about the environment, look at all the stuff they're buying, they're not buying sustainable things they're just buying the cheapest stuff they can this is something that I do hear quite a lot of people saying that and it's like again especially if you're living in more deprived areas like do you have access to these types of things some people can't just like pop on the internet and do research about oh is this company ethical is that company ethical so I'm not at all trying to diminish what you said just something that I think should be brought to the conversation and part of the thing also then being how do we make these things more accessible you know how can we make it so it's easier for people to buy fresh produce or some people might not even know how to cook or all of these things so I suppose like anything just an incredibly complicated thing with no easy solution this isn't to say that like all things are expensive you know you can if you buy second hand clothes then you're not contributing to that industry and it's cheaper but again lots of things in there that don't always come into the conversation my initial question was about the workshops I was really curious about just kind of how you've designed those because I know like there's so many different approaches to that and some are just going to make people's eyes glaze over so it sounds like you've just done really amazing work there so I'm curious to if you would be willing to expand on that a bit but again the workshops everything that we try and do within our organisation is from lived experiences and from lived experiences really so what we've done with the workshops we've got the dance group is a group of people who come from Glasgow and they'll come to the Highlands and they'll do the workshops that way and then the storytellers again some of them are authors themselves so they'll bring their books there and we'll do that the poetry again is people's own work and we'll just arrange a venue we'll get together and we'll use that as an opportunity to be able to engage with other people we also go around NYP so it's allowed me to go to different schools and we can have storytelling we can have cultural days so we use the opportunities of being able to go to different schools to get the message we need to get across as well as just using our friendship circle to then invite we did have last year we had the Black History Month and I'm always cutting the fence on Black History Month you can't teach everything you need to teach in one month it's just not possible and I wish we had this every single day so in that time our target was to have about 150 people in the Highlands there's not a lot of Black people in the Highlands so 150 people we were like ok we're going with 150 and so we got the venue and we ended up with 475 the venue couldn't cope so we had to say and it wasn't even the majority of them the majority of them were white people who just wanted to learn and who just wanted to know more and because of that the workshops have expanded and just gone from group to group to group that is really good I think that's a really good positive point to finish on I'm going to give all of our speakers a minute each so to wind up in terms of what you take away from the day and I'm going to go in reverse order try to think who I got first Peter you came last in the first slot so what's your final concluding thoughts on a minute because there's been so much raised this afternoon well I think to stress once again Matt that sense of interconnectedness it's very very important to understand that a lot of the challenges facing humanity are global challenges and they face all of humanity and they require a solution where everyone has a way to contribute I also think just to respond to what you said just a moment ago if there was anything good that came out of the by-election in West London a few weeks ago it was a realisation that we can't impose climate policies on the back of poor people in fact we all have to make a sacrifice together and we need to think more I think in a more reflective way obviously there's going to be an attempt to exploit exploit and to try and play down the importance of climate policy but I think if we have more rounded solutions which take into account how we can bring the entire British population entire world population with us when we impose measures that are going to be necessary to prevent what I think is a rolling acute climate emergency that will only be to the good Okay, thanks Next up Maya what are you thinking Scotland's a global citizen what are you taking away from the day what do we do I once had someone say that loyalty does and in this kind of situation what I take away from this or what I would encourage everyone to think about in terms of being a global citizen is we are each other's family and we're not connected by blood we're not connected by loyalty we're connected by humanity and what we do now might not impact us now but it'll impact us in generations to come and they can look back and just say oh my goodness I'm so glad they decided to work together as humanity because we now have this amazing place to live in or we can become so divided and we can fight against each other and then everything will just crumble so we can either work together as humanity, as life was intended for us to be and just create something amazing for the generations to come Okay, thank you very much and you get the last word I'll keep mine very short and sweet I'll just say I think there's a lot of passion around being global citizens within the room and that's really good to see and I've picked up on so much engagement on different issues that pertain being a global citizen so I think it's more so knowing that yes maybe Scotland is a good global citizen but there's still a long way for it to go before they can claim that they are a great global citizen so the passion's in the room and it's up to us the people in the room to actually stack those grassroots objectives and for the MSPs in the room to do the big jobs for us as well No pressure No that's fantastic Luke, I think we've had superb panellists today so I want a big round of applause for Tabitha, Peter and Maya Thank you everybody but how do we make Scotland a good global citizen there was quite a lot of recurring themes and one of them was about us as individuals what do we all do both individually collectively what are our influences I don't know if anyone's been to see Take One Action the radical film campaign group see when you leave one of their films you have to go in your head say what is the one action I'm going to do after today so I'm going to send that thought out what can everyone in this room do so you've got three to four local councillors depending where you stay in Scotland what is the local fair trade policy in your council area what's happening in schools that was a conversation that came up a lot schools and preschool you've got one local MSP and seven regional list MSPs you've got one MP and next up are the UK elections so you actually have an opportunity to influence this discussion as to how we make Scotland as good a global citizen as we can be and in the Parliament we've got one or two opportunities if you have spare time I want to thank Louise from the Scottish International Development Alliance because she helped craft today get our speakers organised and think of our themes and we have a cross party group that's coming up very soon 19th of September where we've got our international development minister coming along Christina McKelvey and we've got our soft intro questions and then we're going to grill her on things like this what more can we do in Scotland how do we spend our money in international development I was told today that the next day Francis Guy who's part of the global campaign network there's a global citizenship event on the 20th of September in Dynamic Earth so google that the 7th of November we've got our next cross party group in international development but if you're interested in all of that go on to the Parliament website put out your social media we've got a cross party group in fair trade I think Martin is in the room you're involved in helping that work and it's thinking about how do we make this happen changing our education changing how we do business all that stuff about fair trade the point was made is not just fair trade it's where do we buy our clothes how much does stuff cost what contracts do our local authorities what contracts does our NHS have where does the food come from there's lots and lots of ways in which we can make a change so I'm going to pick a way I'm not going to just do one take one action obviously because you've put too many questions on for me I'm going to be networking with colleagues local level, UK level and in the Parliament but let's think collectively because we want to be proud of being in Scotland and we could do a hell of a lot more to make the world a better place from the points that were made about poverty in Scotland to poverty across the globe so let's think about how we use our own agency organisations you're in where if you've got a job what does your company do what does your organisation do let's get our voices heard and we're in a democracy so we can say what we think you can say what we think and we can work together it's been a great discussion and thanks everyone on the platform fantastic, great


فشرف بل اشتغالي بالعلم ولا تبغي به ما عشت يا بدا بدا وياله من شراف عظيم الحمد لله رب العالمين والصلاة والسلام على أشرف الأنبياء والمرسلين سيدنا ونبينا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه والتابعين لهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين أما بعد نحن فينا الكتاب ثلاثة الأصول لشيخ الإسلام محمد بن عبدالوهاب رحمه الله تعالى اليوم إن شاء الله تعالى سيكون لديه الثلاث لسن إن شاء الله تعالى نتحدث about the statement of the author رحمه الله when he said الأولى العلم that the first thing from the four things that is obligatory on every individual to come with is knowledge we spoke about what knowledge is and the intent in which the sheikh meant by the knowledge that he meant the Islamic knowledge and we also spoke about the evidence that came regarding one seeking knowledge إن شاء الله تعالى there is an important point that we need to speak about in this place إن شاء الله تعالى regarding knowledge a person as the scholars they say blind following is not permissible when it comes to matters of عقيدة what a person has to have knowledge a person has to have the knowledge meaning he has to have the evidence والواجب فيه أن يحصل له العبد أن يحصل له العبد بدليله it is obligatory on the person to gain knowledge in the أصول and the عقيد the matters such as Allah تعالى the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and the religion of Islam and that is why the scholars they say أن التقليدة لا ينفع في العقائد the blind following will not benefit you in عقيدة بلا بد من معرفة المسائل التي يجب اعتقادها بدليلها because it is obligatory for the person to know the matters which are obligatory on the person it is obligatory on them to know it with their evidence and the دليل here is more broader وهذا الدليل عم من أن يكون نصر من القرآن the dailil that I am referring to here is more broader than a textual evidence نصم من القرآن a textual evidence an evidence from the Quran أو من السنة أو من قول صاحب or the statement of an individual أو اجمع so it is more than just a text from the Quran it is more than a hadith from the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم it is more than a statement of a companion it is more than an ijma'a or even an analogy a qias now we are going to speak about that إن شاء الله تعالى in more details later so according to the people of the sunnah and the jama'a التقليد لا يجوزه في العقائد blind following is not permissible in عقيدة even the asha'arah and the maturidiyah who are not from the people of the sunnah and the jama'a they also believe that as well so according to these two deviated groups الأشاعرة إن الماتوريدية and also they see لا يجوزه التقليد that blind following is not permissible but there is a difference between أهل السنة والجماعة when they say blind following is not permissible in عقيدة and when the asha'arah and the maturidiyah when they say it and what is the difference between the two the difference between the two is that the blind following according to أهل السنة is different from the blind following according to the أشاعراء إن الماتوريدية والتقليد عند أهل السنة والجماعة يختلف عن التقليد عند أولائك فأولائك يرون أن أول واجب هو النظر because the asha'arah they believe and the maturidiyah they believe that the first thing that is needed from an individual is to look is to look and they believe they believe a person's إيمان is not correct unless he looks and the look they mean here as I said ويقصدون بالنظر أن نظر في الآيات المرئية في الآيات القونية they say that the person has to look at the universal signs and the person has to look at the heavens and he has to look at the earth and from that he has to then try to say that Allah exists and then from that and etc so the person has to have doubt before he comes with Islam and then he has to remove that doubt of his by looking around that is what the asha'arah and the maturidiyah believe أما أهل السنة والجماعة أهل السنة والجماعة they say يجب أن يأخذ الحق بالدليل they believe that is obligatory upon the person when the haq comes to them they take it with his evidence and the evidence and the sunnah believe is the textual evidence such as the Quran the sunnah the jma'a and etc as for the asha'arah and the maturidiyah what were they saying they were saying no the universal signs whereas أهل السنة والجماعة they say it is necessary to look into the evidence not to extract from it not for the purpose to extract but to know that evidence has come regarding this because not every person can do extract a ruling but the person needs to know that there is an evidence that has come regarding this issue and what issues is it that a person is not allowed to blind follow it is in في المسائل التي it is in matters which it is in مسائل في المسائل التي لا يصح إسلام المرء إلا بها it is any matter which a person's Islam will not be correct except with it such as a person knowing that he is the one who deserves to be worshipped alone a person has to have فلا بد أن يكون عنده برحان علي you have to have evidence for this in which the person knows through the course of his life and that is why the scholars they teach this book in the مساجد and they make sure this book ثلاثة الأصول is memorised and it's learnt especially those who are new to Islam even those who are born into Islam who don't know much about their religion they also have to be taught this book so they are well aware of the evidences that are needed from them in مسائل these matters so from the the thing that a person has to have knowledge of in which شيخ محمد بن عبد الوهاب رحمه الله brought in his book is معرفة لله that a person has to know اللهم سبحانه وتعالى that a person has to know اللهم تبارك وتعالى and knowing اللهم سبحانه وتعالى means that اللهم سبحانه وتعالى he exists also the second is knowing اللهم تبارك وتعالى in singling for him his ربوبية that اللهم تبارك وتعالى is الخالق and الرازق and المدبر he is the one who created you he is the one who provides for you and the one who sustains your affairs and controls your affairs that is number 2 number 3 is that you know اللهم تبارك وتعالى is the one who is deserving of worship alone and that no one should be worshiped besides him سبحانه وتعالى and the fourth is the fourth is the person he knows اللهم تبارك وتعالى as names and attributes and he affirms them for him سبحانه وتعالى the way اللهم تبارك وتعالى affirmed it for himself and the way that the Prophet ﷺ affirmed it for اللهم تبارك وتعالى and the person also negates from اللهم تبارك وتعالى in his names and attributes he negates from him that which has come to him that اللهم his messenger have negated so that is what it means to know اللهم تبارك وتعالى it means to know his existence it is also to know that اللهم تبارك وتعالى is ربوبية ربوبية means that اللهم is خالق رازق and مدبر number 3 is to know that اللهم is the only one who deserves to be worshiped and number 4 which is to know اللهم تبارك وتعالى as names and attributes also knowing اللهم تبارك وتعالى one part of it is to know the textual evidences that have come regarding اللهم تبارك وتعالى so for instance we know اللهم تبارك وتعالى through the Quran we know اللهم تبارك وتعالى through the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ we also which is the آيات الشرعية the textual evidences the second way we also know اللهم تبارك وتعالى is آيات الكونية the universal signs that are around us إن في خلق السماوات والأرض واختلاف الليل والنهاري لآيات the day and the night the morning the evening the earth and the heavens all of them are signs for us to recognize اللهم تبارك وتعالى and those آيات which are the آيات الكونية the universal signs if the person already has the آيات الشرعية intact the آيات الشرعية as I said is the Quran the Kitab of Allah and the Sunnah of the Messenger ﷺ if he has that with him and then the person moves on to looking at the universal signs then that individual will be able to understand that Allah is the only one who desires to be worshipped and he would also believe there is going to be resurrection and that the person will be rewarded in accordance to their actions so that is معرفة الله to know اللهم تبارك وتعالى then the sheikh said ومعرفة نبيه to know the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and knowing the Prophet ﷺ is فرض على كل مكلفن it is obligatory on every individual and it is وحد مهمات الدين and it is one of the most important things of our religion the reason for that is our Prophet ﷺ هو المبلغ عن الله تعالى he is the one who is conveying on behalf of Allah سبحانه وتعالى وهذا المعرفة تستلزم قبول ما جاء به من عند الله تعالى من الهداة ودين الحق knowing the Prophet ﷺ will necessitate or it will entail that the person accepts everything which the Prophet ﷺ comes with from guidance and the true religion the person will accept it because they know the Prophet ﷺ they know the Prophet ﷺ and that is why it is important to know the Prophet ﷺ then the sheikh said ومعرفة دين الإسلام بالأدلة and to know the religion of Islam with evidence ومعرفة دين الإسلام بالأدلة to know the religion of Islam with evidence الإسلام له معنى إسلام has two meanings معنى نعام ومعنى الخاص إسلام has a general meaning and it also has a specific meaning لأنه قد وردت أدلة because there has come evidence تدل على أن الإسلام خاص بهادي الأمة they have come evidences that prove that Islam is specific to this nation but they also have come evidences أفام الإسلام for the previous nations now let's look at the evidences that prove Islam as a general religion for all the previous nations as well صورة المائدة آية 54 الله سبحانه وتعالى he says الله is talking about the Torah and he is talking about the Prophet of Manusra'il الله سبحانه وتعالى he said يحكم بها النبيون الذين أسلموا الله تبارك وتعالى he described what فوصف الله سبحانه أنبياء بن إسلاعيل بالإسلام الله described the prophets of بن إسلاعيل with Islam so that ayah shows that Islam is not specific to this nation alone so this is the general Islam also الله تبارك وتعالى يصر صورة يونس ayah 84 إن كنتم آمنتم بالله فعليه توكلوا إن كنتم مسلمين when you look at this yaks of the ayat you realize الله سبحانه وتعالى is speaking about نبي الله موسى saying this to his people الله said إن كنتم آمنتم بالله if you have believed in Allah فعليه only on Allah توكلوا rely on إن كنتم مسلمين if you are Muslims also الله تبارك وتعالى سن صورة البقرة ay 130 is talking about the children of yaks ابناء yaks عليه مسلام الله said قالوا نعبدوا إلهك وإله آبائك إبراهيم واسماعيل واسحاق إله وواحد ونحن له مسلمون they said we will worship your Lord and the Lord of your fathers إبراهيم واسماعيل واسحاق only one only one Lord we are going to worship ونحن له مسلمون and we are Muslims so that Islam is بمعن العام the general meaning or the general Islam as for the specific Islam it means the religion الدين الذي باعت الله نبيه محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم عليه وسلم به it is the religion which Allah سبحانه وتعالى He sent out Muhammad with وجعله خاتمة خاتمة أديان أن الله made it a final religion لا يقبل من أحد دين سواه in which no religion will be accepted from anyone besides it قال تعالى الله said ومن يبتغي غير الإسلام دينا فلا يقبل منه وهو في الآخرة من الخاصرين صورة آل عمران قاية 85 anyone who looks for a religion other than Islam فلا يقبل منه it will not be accepted from them وهو أن that individual الآخرة in the hereafter he is from those who are upon destruction a loss صورة المائدة آية 3 الله سبحانه وتعالى He said اليوم أكملت لكم دينكم وأتممت عليكم نعمتي وراضيت لكم الإسلام دينة اليوم أكملت لكم محافظ وأكملت حسابي ومحافظ وأكملت محافظ مع الإسلام ومحافظ هؤلاء أكثر they benefit us الله سبحانه وتعالى يشعر لكي يكون أمت ومحافظ ومحافظ يشعر بمعنة الخاصر ومحافظ محافظ ومحافظ والمحافظ ومحافظ جانب إمام� ماسلم محافظ صحيح وعلى ر~) أبو هيرا رضي الله تعالى عنه أن للصحاب سبحانه وتعالى والتصف بيلّ أجل خفق ومحمد من بفر محمد عزا لا يسمع ف على أحد من هذه الأمة لا one hears me from this Ummah and the Ummah here is Ummah to Dawa not Ummah to Ijaba there's two types of Ummah the Ummah who have accepted him which are the Muslims only and the Ummah to Ijaba which are the which means the disbelievers included لا يسمع بأحد من هذه الأمة يهودي ولا نصراني ثم يموت ولم يؤمن بالذي أرسلته إلا كان من أصحاب النار The Prophet said, I swear by the Lord in which my soul is in his hand no one hears me from this Ummah whether he is a Jew or a Christian and then he dies and he hasn't believed in that which I have been sent with except that individual is from the people of the Hellfire The sheikh said What does he mean by Adilla? Adilla first of all it has come in a plural form Adilla is plural in the Arabic language the plural are three types جمع مذكر السالم a masculine plural and a feminine plural it's جمع عنة السالم and the third one is a broken plural which is جمع التكسير The word Adilla it came in the broken plural جمع التكسير The singular is دليل and if you look at the singular it has come in the morphological form of فعيل and the وزن فعيل here is meant by فعيل من الدلالة دليل means هو المرشد إلا المطلوب is that which guides you to the thing that you are looking for A evidence is إذا إما سمعي وإما عقلي be a textual evidence or a logical evidence The textual evidence is ماثبت بالوحي من كتابن أو سنة is that which has been affirmed either from the كتاب of Allah or the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ that is the textual evidence as for the الدل العقلي is that which comes by way of observation and looking ماثبت بالنظري والتأمل and we will be speaking about that وسيأتي إن شاء الله وتعالى شيء من ذلك في أثناء الرسالة and we will be speaking about that more in details as we go into the book إن شاء الله وتعالى and we will be speaking about the issue of the تقليد in the issues of عقيدة properly we will also be speaking about knowing Allah in more details we will also be speaking about knowing the Prophet ﷺ in more details and we will also be speaking about knowing the religion of Islam what it means in more details we will stop there for today's lesson إن شاء الله وتعالى سبحانك اللهم بحمدك أشهد أن لا إله إلا الله أستغفرك وأتوب إلي


Stangs have led throughout Carly Bows, fakes in, now spins around, gets through to Fenders, and the record is hers alone. Hers alone. That is the Carly Bows we have grown to know and love.


Hey, I'm here and I'm in my pajamas at five in the afternoon to just talk about the Mortal Engines movie real quick. So you may know that a couple weeks ago I read this book and reviewed it and I thought it was fine, you know. Like it wasn't really good, it wasn't really bad, but it was clearly trying, so I just didn't think too much of it. But then the trailers for the movie, they just looked absolutely awful. So I went into this expecting to just laugh at it at the very least. But then I was pleasantly surprised that this is actually a pretty good film. Like really, I'm not even joking at all, it's like, it's not perfect obviously, there are a couple of issues with the script and with the characters, but overall it was actually really good. Like I really enjoyed the way it looked obviously. Like the way it's directed, the director of this worked on Lord of the Rings and you can tell, like you can feel the scale of this world. And you can feel the scale of these cities. I mean from the first minute of film, you can just feel how big London is and you can tell from the first second that, yeah this is a weird world, but I was actually kind of getting into it. You know, one of my issues with the book was that the image of these big cities moving around was kind of goofy to me, but the film really helped me forget that. And I just absolutely loved that about it. I also want to say that they did a pretty good job with the majority of the characters. You know, Hester is still likable and all, it's just a little weird that her scar is not as bad as it was described in the book and people still treat it like it is. Like in the book, you know, it just figured her entire face, but in this it's still pretty bad, but I don't know, whatever. And Tom is actually a lot better and I think part of that is because he gets less focused than in the book and you also don't really talk about like his love-sick pining for Catherine or his undying devotion to Valentine that was at the beginning, which just made him seem a lot stupider, whereas in the film they get rid of that and you can tell that from the beginning he kind of knows, okay yeah, Valentine's not a great guy, and he does get one or two genuinely funny lines, but beyond that he doesn't have a whole lot of personality.  Like, you know, Mr. Pomeroy is mostly cut out. He has barely any role and Mayor Crome is also mostly cut out.  They just keep him evil and crazy the whole way through and thing is he's played by Hugo Weaving, so that's basically the perfect pick they could have had for this, because Hugo Weaving's acting is kind of silly, but it's also just, it still has this weight to it. There are one or two issues with the script though, like it cuts out some bits from the book and the climax is a lot different, but the ending is mostly the same. If you see it you'll know what I mean, it's hard to explain without spoilers, but, like, you know, overall it's a pretty good film, like it's not overly long and it does still have beginning, middle, end, it doesn't sequel weight too hard. Most of the characters are pretty solid. The acting is pretty solid as well.  And the special effects, again, are really good. You just feel the size of this world. It looks very unique, very cool. And, yeah, that's really all I have to say. So if this looks like something that might interest you, go check it out. If it looks really dumb and cheesy, I don't know if seeing it will change your mind, per se, because it changed mine, but I don't know. You may feel differently, but I think it's at least worth checking out just for visuals alone.