Are you unhappy? Have you been unhappy? And maybe you're beginning to notice many of your friends, co-workers, and family have been too. You're not just seeing things, you're probably right. Unhappiness is on the rise, with research results showing that Americans are currently more unhappy than they have ever been in a decade. With many social, political, financial, and health problems multiplying by the second, people have been struggling to find meaning in their daily activities. Does this mean everything is doomed for destruction beyond repair? Not necessarily. There are many things outside of our control, but the things that are manageable have room for growth. Here are 10 unhealthy behaviors to get rid of. 1. You're eating when you're bored, not hungry. Do you eat when you're stressed or bored? We know it's tempting to reach for a chocolate bar when you're having a bad day, or sharing a big bucket of popcorn at the movies with friends, because it's always been a tradition. Eating in large increments when you're not actually hungry can cause you to gain weight, break out, and make you feel more sluggish than productive. Before eating, ask yourself how you're feeling and keep a log to figure out what's causing your munchies. Another helpful tip is to drink some water and wait half an hour. Sometimes, you might not actually be hungry, but dehydrated. 2. Ruminating If you have depression or anxiety, it might be hard to realize you're even having negative thoughts when they're super common. If you often worry about the future and dwell on the past to the point of paralysis, you'll only end up digging yourself deeper in a hole. Psychologists have recommended finding healthy distractions, such as reading a good book or spending time with loved ones. Once your mind is in a positive place, you'll be more open to problem solving. Another strategy is to schedule a half-hour window for ruminating. That way, you're not resisting the urge, but simply blowing off the steam in healthy increments instead of allowing it to control your whole day. 3. Hardcore Potatoing After a long week, it's normal to want to stay in to recharge. But if you find yourself binge-watching shows on the couch all the time, instead of going out for fresh air and exercise, this can increase the risk of memory loss and puts you at a higher risk for developing diabetes, because you're more likely to consume sugary snacks and drinks. We're not telling you to cut cold turkey on your favorite show, but channel your energy to healthier options, such as consuming only two hours of TV on a daily basis and exercising during commercials. 4. Avoiding Responsibilities Who else is afraid of adulting? I know I still am. But that shouldn't be an excuse to stay in your comfort zone. Paying bills, budgeting, even cooking, these are unknown areas that might seem foreign to you at the moment, but it won't always be that way. Break free from codependency if you feel like you rely on your parents for everything and start doing research. We are grateful to live in an era where YouTube exists. Find some easy, healthy recipes to start with and life hacks on saving money. You'll make mistakes along the way, so use them as learning opportunities. 5. Complaining Instead of Taking Action Do you often compare your life to others and wonder why the grass always seems greener on the other side? It's tempting to point fingers, play the victim, and believe that the world is out to get you. But it's not. Recognize that your choices have consequences, bad or good. Overnight success is a myth, so get ready to pace yourself. Use a calendar and planner to create daily to-do lists. This will help you track your progress and achievements. 6. Saying Yes All The Time If you're a people pleaser, this will be painfully relevant. But the good news is that saying no does not make you a lesser or worse of a person. It means you respect yourself, your health, and your boundaries. The truth is, when you die, no one is going to remember how hard you worked or how you made them feel. Use your time wisely, say no to soul-sucking tasks that won't benefit you, and do things that fulfill you instead. 7. Tolerating Toxic Behaviors The thing about toxic people is that they're not always cold and ruthless. If that were the case, abusive relationships wouldn't be an ongoing issue. But it is, and we know that it's not always easy to walk away, especially if these people are your parents. But you should never tolerate toxic behavior on any level. If you must, report it to the police. They can get you to a place of safety. Change is scary, but so is staying in that dark place when you deserve so much more. 8.  One study showed that when people gave up Facebook for a week, they found that they felt happier and less lonely. It's easy to compare our lives to others, but what we see on social media are often only people's best moments, not the whole story.  Moderation is key. 9. Not Telling Your Doctor The Truth Doctors can't fix everything, but they can help us with our health tremendously. That is, if we're actually going to be truthful. It's so easy to say you're doing fine during annual checkups when you're really not. Remember, they aren't mind-readers, so if you've been feeling fatigued, your stomach's been hurting, or your bowel movements haven't been the greatest, there's no shame in letting them know what's happening. 10. Not Telling Yourself The Truth If you're stuck at a dead-end job you're not happy with, or your partner isn't who you see yourself with long-term, guess what? The only person holding yourself back from a better future is yourself. Days will sometimes seem uncertain, and yes, you might be disappointed in your next job or relationship, but until you give something else a chance, your world will only feel smaller and more limited. What bad habits would you like to detach from? Let us know in the comments section below. Be sure to also subscribe for more helpful content, and give this video a thumbs up if you liked it. Thanks for watching!


aunch date, 16 August, will they still be able to sell in Scotland? That is where I think that the updated guidance from SEPA is very important. What SEPA is saying is that if you have a small distillery with a shop and you sell all your products in that shop, and if on day one of the scheme, on 16 August, you are not operating a deposit return scheme, what is the plan? Are you committed to becoming compliant with the scheme and what is your plan for doing so? What is difficult for a small business? The businesses that we are dealing with are not used to being regulated by SEPA. If you have been regulated by SEPA for the last 20 years, you can read these documents and understand them better. There is a technically, you have to be registered with a scheme administrator or directly with SEPA on 16 August to sell in Scotland. What has been set out is a document that you can interpret and I use the word carefully interpret because it is giving guidance about having a plan in place. Donald? If I may simply say, and I said that I would not speak in behalf of the regulator, SEPA is very aware that a lot of organisations that are now about to deal with have never dealt with them before, so just recently SEPA published a guidance to how they would support, regulate and ultimately enforce. As David said, the pragmatic view that they are taking and we are again speaking on their behalf, you may wish to have them directly in front of you at some point, I have said that if you are committed to complying but you are struggling for whatever reason, SEPA will support them. We have interpreted that as you have to aim for compliance with the dates. If there are genuine reasons why you have not been able to do so, SEPA will continue to support them so that they can get compliant. We will maintain open our registration window for as long as it takes, so there may be genuine reasons why a company that has not been able to register in time is not, as far as my interpretation is concerned, a shutter. If there are requirements that need to be supported by SEPA, that organisation can be helped by SEPA to get through and register and continue to trade. Nobody wants to close down trade for those organisations. Go on, Llym, could you just clarify that for me, just so I understand it, because I am slightly confused here. SEPA have regulations that have been enforced and put in by the Parliament. What you are saying is that SEPA do not have to abide by those regulations, they can interpret them as they see fit, if they think that they are moving in the general direction. That is not my understanding of the law, but if that is what you are saying, I would be interested to hear that just repeated. With respect, convener, that is not what I said. The laws are laid down by the Parliament. SEPA regulate against those. SEPA have an approach to regulation that is not black and white. They have a desire, like a lot of regulators, to support organisations in becoming compliant with the regulations. Believe me, SEPA are very clear that they will absolutely go to the letter of the regulations, but they have a role, a pragmatic role, to support and help organisations get to compliance. That is a change for those businesses, and they need time to adjust to that. SEPA are taking a pragmatic view that says that if you have an intent to comply with the regulations but for whatever legitimate reason you are struggling, SEPA will support them. Clearly, if you are a business that says, I am going to ignore those, I am going to find ways around them, you will have a very different conversation with your regulator. To be really clear, they are interpreting the regulations as laid down and approved by the good people here, but they are supporting businesses to get to a position of compliance, which is what everybody wants. To be absolutely clear, I have got to ask you another question a second, but just to reflect back what you said, if my business, if I had one, was not registered by the 16th of August, I may not be able to sell in Scotland going forward. Mark Ruskell asked some interesting questions earlier about the support package, the measures that have been put in place to help smaller producers to participate in DRS. Notwithstanding those support measures, will there nevertheless be small, perhaps artisan businesses who you project will go out of business due to the scheme, perhaps due to the obligations placed on them, as detailed by the deputy convener earlier? Firstly, in terms of compliance on the 16th of August, as the regulations stand, you must be registered with either SEPA or a scheme administrator on the 16th of August to sell in Scotland. What Donald obviously has described is that within the way that these regulations will be enforced, there is some scope for supporting businesses who are not fully compliant on the 16th of August to become so. As an organisation, what we are committed, we have the opportunity to continue to register these businesses, is to work with them to address what concerns them about being able to register and operate deposit return, which links into the question about whether they will still be here due to the complexity of bringing the scheme to life. I am going to ask Irene because we are spending time with the organisations representing small businesses to understand what issues have not been addressed that we can fix and find solutions for. It is very much for us about being practical, finding the problems and seeking to address them. Thank you, David. I would like to say the absolute outset. It is our intention that no businesses would suffer financial harm through this. As David said, there is absolutely a cost to the scheme, with all producers contributing to that because it is a change in how we are recycling materials. However, the whole board and all the executive team within Circularity Scotland are objective to support all businesses through this. As a result of that, we have been working on our solution-based workshops with the associations that represent the smaller producers. The dialogue has been going on for some time, but we have increased the intensity of our discussions with them and come up with the absolute solutions that are required. I could give an example, which is something that we are exploring. It is not committed yet. An example would be a threshold of smaller volumes for wine importers, for example, that would be pragmatic common sense and something that we could look at for a short period of time. We are absolutely committed to coming forward and working with those organisations to get solutions that are going to help them to navigate their way through this change. As a result of that, the idea is that there are no businesses that are adversely affected by this implementation. I will come back later. Thanks, Liam. I am going to come to Collette. Okay, thanks, convener. Good morning, panel. Yeah, I have got several questions. I was invited along to a small distillery in my constituency recently who have got a variety of concerns. They produce predominantly whisky and gin, and they have attended the roadshow. They felt that we were more confused by the roadshow, and a lot of their answers—sorry—questions were not answered. Touching on some of the things that we spoke about, their bottles are very exquisite. They are all wrapped. They are absolutely beautiful. In fact, when I visited, one of them was actually in terms of touching upon circular economy and single use. It was getting used as a lampshade and a candle holder. Their big concern in terms of incurring costs is that, as a producer and a small producer, they would incur that cost for each bottle However, the likelihood is that those items will not be brought back in. More often than not, what they do in terms of some of their suppliers is that they actually just fill the bottle back up rather than recycle it. The other thing that I pointed out was that because the bottle is so beautiful, more often than not, the likelihood is that that would not be a litter item on our streets. Maybe you could touch on that as well. I would take up your offer to go and visit them and answer some of the questions. The other areas that they asked about were the import label. They have consulted with HMRC, who have said that it is a fraud aspect of it in terms of the import label. The other aspect is that, because their bottles are wrapped, what about the re-labeling again? Can you come up with solutions there? I would be keen to know what your comments are on that. I think that what you just outlined is a compelling case for where you have tiny volumes that we potentially seek a route to get them exempted, which is something that we are keen to explore. However, notwithstanding that, which does not exist today, what are we doing today primarily is looking at effectively a sticky labelling solution to provide a low admin practical option for low volume producers. We are talking about producers' items below 25,000 units a year, so it is not in the handmade category. It is a much higher volume Simon. Can you touch on that, please? To enable small producers who do not invest in labels or do not barcode, particularly the small whisky engine guys and people do not actually want to barcode on the bottle, particularly if it is an attractive bottle. We are in the process of finalising the solution that will allow a producer to order a GS1 compliant barcode. We will provide them with labels that they can provide to the consumer with the bottle should the consumer wish to take their 20p back. They have the ability to apply the label and take it to a machine or a manual return point to get their money back. If they choose not to, because they want to turn it into a lampshade and they do not want to take the extra sticker off, that is their prerogative. We absolutely want to make sure that the small producers do not have to invest in heavy labelling and change the dynamic of their bottle. We want to give them a simple solution that allows them to be able to offer the consumer their 20p back. In terms of consumers keeping the bottles, in appointing a scheme administrator, the responsibility to achieve 90 per cent passes collectively over to the scheme administrator in totality, so that your distillery would not have to worry about specifically having a 90 per cent return rate that would be taken care of by us. The point about refillables, if the company is marketing them as a refillable product, which is a very environmentally friendly approach, is that they are out of scope of the scheme and they would not need to take part. As far as I am aware, they have been told that they do not need to take part and they would have to compliance. We can consult with SIPA, who are the ultimate determinant of whether they are in scope or not, but they have options there. The other thing that I wanted to ask about was how you have gone about setting your fee structure for producers. Did you look at aspects such as how costs would be distributed across businesses or the environmental impacts of different materials? Are the producers still raising concerns about the fee structure following the changes that are made in the support package? In terms of the dialogue that we are having with producers, we have had a lot of adverse feedback back in August and went out with the original fees that were quite high, reflecting a set of estimates at the time. When we were able to revise that in November, the feedback that we have had pretty much across industry is that, of course, they would rather it be less, but we are now at a level that they feel is realistic and reasonable. The message that we have given clearly is the one about commitment to developing the efficiency of that so that I would like to see the fees come down over time as we are more efficient. Obviously, in an inflationary world, that is something of a challenge, but be clear that there is an absolute commitment there to keep improving it. What we have done at this stage, again, is to take feedback that came from industry, but we have looked at reflecting the different operating costs for the different materials. Glass is more expensive to handle. We do not have a choice about where the glass is in the scheme. The regulations require it. We have to collect it, but it costs more to handle. That is reflected in the fee. We have reflected the different differential costs of operating with the different materials, but we have also reflected the different values of material. Aluminium cans, when they are baled, are extremely valuable. Glass is not, and that is one of the other features of the fees. The other point that has stressed on this is that the way that we are set up is that we effectively have a fee structure that is flat on a per-container basis. If we ignore any fixed costs that might be within the producer for systems or anything that they need to do within their company, I feel that one of the benefits that we have here is that we are open access. You do not have to be a member to sign up with us. You do not have to be a major producer who can provide funding to sign up with us. We are completely self-funded. Whether you are the smallest company or the largest drinks company in the world, you are paying the same price.  Beyond where we are today, right now, we are relying on a lot of estimates and assumptions about what will happen when that goes live. How will the cost build up? What containers will be placed on the market? Will there be changes in the nature of containers placed on the market as a result of the scheme? Very quickly, when we go live, we become very data rich. That will enable us to assess the drivers of costs, assess whether we still have the most appropriate fee structure and we have the scope to evolve it, very much with the idea of it being based on the cost drivers but also fair, so that producers are paying a fair fee for their share of the costs that they are creating. Last question, and then I will come to Monica. There have been various different reports in the media and what not in social media and things about from Scotland and then cross-border and potential fraud to be carried out. What have you done to prepare for that and to what extent do you think it will occur? A function of this fee scheme is that we are implementing it in Scotland, which has an open border with England. We do not have the power to compel producers to label and differentiate Scottish market products. We expect a great many of the products placed on the market in Scotland to be treated so. We wish we could. If we could change one thing today, we would have the power to enforce those labels, but we do not. It is the nature of the world that we are living in. However, as you would expect, a great deal is being done, which I will ask Irene to talk about, in terms of addressing and managing the risk. We cannot eliminate it, but what are we doing to manage it? I think that that will be delved into slightly later in the session. I will try not to tread on anyone's toes, but I will come to Monica. It has been quite an interesting session so far and I will probably pick up on Collette Stevenson's questions about small producers, because that is what my interest is today. At the start, I was quite struck by your comment that we have more than 100 years of relevant experience in front of us today. On the one hand, that is reassuring, but we can see that many small producers are still not getting access to the answers that they need. I am hoping today that we can make some progress on that. Sticking with small producers, I think that Collette and I have been speaking to the same local businesses, but they are not alone. The example that I have in mind is a small producer who did not sign up before the deadline. They have not signed up yet and they did attend one of your in-person road shows, but they have left their very frustrated speaking to other small producers. They have these common concerns and I think that all of us want a more circular economy, but we do not want people going round and round in circles trying to get very basic answers and being passed between Circularity Scotland, SEPA, Trade and Standards Scotland and, of course, the minister. That business said that the minister did not reply to them. However, I think that I heard David Harris say a moment ago that the example that Collette Stevenson described might be exempt because they operate on such a small scale at the moment and they are trying to heavily promote refill and reuse. If they are exempt, who would tell them that and why have they not been able to get that information so far from Circularity Scotland, SEPA or the Government? Firstly, today there is no exemption for them, but what we have indicated is that through the workshops that we have been holding with small producer representatives, one of the requests that has come forward, which we are supportive of, would be just that. We cannot repeat enough if you are speaking to small producers or any small business that has got concerns. Please get them to call us because we are having a huge amount and we are getting it fed back to us constantly, particularly through the website, misinformation and poor interpretation of either our role or the regulations. If somebody engages with us to support them, we are not seeking to pass them off to SEPA or send them away to read the regulations. We have a customer service team who has now been doing this for probably six months and built a huge amount of knowledge supporting the hundreds of small businesses that have signed up or are still talking to us. Obviously, it concerns me if there are attended workshops and left concerned that they have not got the answers because we are committed to addressing that. The first thing is to make sure that people… I thank you to your customer service team. They clearly have a busy and challenging job to do. Those small businesses that we are talking about today are heavily invested in local communities, heavily invested in their workforce rates and in securing people's jobs and growing their businesses, thinking also about net zero sustainability. They are not shy at picking up the phone. They are not shy at emailing MSPs and asking people to come out. How many times do they have to phone and ask the question before they get the answer? Is it right to pass them to SEPA and is there an opportunity to get SEPA Circularity Scotland and others that can answer in the same room? It seems to be the problem that people are getting passed from pillar to post. If that is the situation, please do not put them in touch with customer service, put them in touch with me, so that I can get to the bottom of what the situation is. This is a big change. A lot of these businesses have never been regulated. As you talk about, these are businesses that are committed to their community. Many of these small businesses are already there in terms of being green and meeting their responsibilities. The regulations have come along and they are caught. It is not us that has caught them with the regulations, but we are the one organisation that has been created to provide an answer to this. All I would say is that if you have a situation where people have spoken to us and they are not happy and they are approaching you, please contact me directly because I want to speak to them and get to the bottom of what the issue is. We have grown this company from nobody to 50 people in six months, so if there is something that is not working there, I want to know about it so that we can fix it. It is a very genuine offer that you have made, but as chief executive and you have a lot of operational stuff to roll out from what you have said, is that a good way to do business? Every single problem in Cwiri has to be channeled to you to get an answer. I am not saying that to be cheeky in any way, but it is just about if that is where we are at right now and we have gone beyond that original sign-up date. Are you feeding this back to ministers? Are you discussing this with the Minister Lorna Slater? You have picked up that you think that there should be a case for exemption. You are correct that it is not in the regulation right now, but are you feeding that back to Government? We are constantly in dialogue with Government about the evolution of the scheme. Donald talked earlier about managing the scope of the scheme. As you would expect, anything that we can do to make this more manageable or more implementable, we are in dialogue with—we are not just talking to the producer, we are talking to everybody who can have a say in sorting this. As I say, we have started this business from nothing and we have had to build it very quickly. One of the things I have found many times is that I have had reports that people cannot speak to us as they are answering questions. We have a CRM system. I can go back and check what discussions have taken place. We have had a lot of incidents where a huge amount of time has been spent. I am not suggesting that this is the business that you are talking to, but people may not like the answers. A lot of this—people do not want to operate a deposit return scheme. We cannot make it go away. Therefore, we have spoken to people who have not been happy with where they have got to or have written to their MSP or their MP who has contacted us. We need to know that we have a great team of people there, all learning fast in a new business. Only by knowing where there is a deficiency will we be able to go and fix it, which is why I do urge, if there is a problem, that it gets reported to me so that I can talk to the team and deal with that incident. Every time I get a letter from an MSP talking about a business, the first thing that I do is go to customer service and say, right, have these people spoken to us? What have we discussed? Where was it left to try to make sure that we are closing down problems as they arise? We are going to be more open and transparent. This is about confidence and trust, and people will be able to get information and clarity. I know that Donald mentioned a YouTube video. I am sure that there are lots of resources out there, but when you are capturing those inquiries, you might have done it already, but is that all on your website? Is this information being shared so that people do not have to keep coming to you with bespoke inquiries? Donald, do you want to pick up on the comments point? A couple of things in there. Absolutely, like any organisation responding to queries, as we see regular types of queries, we update our website. Some of the queries are related to the legislation. As I said before, we are organising and collaborating and trying to coordinate all the various communications that happen to ensure that there is a growing body of support and evidence. We are producing guidance documents more and more frequently. I think that another two or three have gone live in the last few days. There is a group that we have not mentioned yet, which is in relation to the gateway reviews, because some of the questions that are asked of our team, we genuinely do not have the answers. We do not know what is the detailed approach for how VAT will be in the real detail addressed, but we are working very closely with Scottish Government, who is on point to address that. There is an organisation, a group set up by Government, chaired by Government, which is represented as of Retails, Producers, Ourselves, SIPA and ZOA Scotland, the system-wide assurance group. It is the body that ensures that all the hard problems and questions, many of which sit outside our remit and scope, are logged and dealt with. Some of those sit with Government to address, some sit with SIPA and some sit with ZOA Scotland, but they are represented as of all the organisations that are affected by DRS on that group. That is another forum, which is set up and chaired by Government in recognition that, yes, there are a lot of different moving parts here, not all of them sit with ourselves, not all sit with SIPA, for example. Government has put itself in the middle of that and is using that as a forum to support the resolution of those questions. I will return to the point about the beautiful bottles that can be reused for lamps, candles and so on. We both spoke to the same business and are concerned that the bottle has to be returned for recycling, it has to be smashed. Now that you have a bit more knowledge of that and also the Parliament will be looking at a circular economy bill, do you think that there needs to be more flexibility around that type of situation that we have described today? Absolutely, if I could answer that question. We are collaborating and working really closely with SIPA, the Scottish Government and the organisations that represent those small businesses. We are coming up with solutions to the specific issues that they are raising and working out on how we can bring those solutions to life within the current legislation, perhaps over a phased period. I would also like to say that, since my time in the business of circularity Scotland, small producers have been a real priority and we have dedicated an enormous amount of resource to working on the answers that they are looking for. It is working with Governments because, if the legislation is as it is, we need to onboard the small producers. If there are specifics that your constitution is saying, that is an area that we can investigate, come up with a pragmatic solution and then take that to Government as a suggestion from the trade bodies, from SIPA, from circularity Scotland and from Government. That is very helpful, thank you. Now I am getting some dirty looks from some people around the table who want to ask more questions. I just want to reiterate that I am going to run this on a wee bit so that the members who have come to this committee are not part of it can answer their questions, so do not worry about it, you will get it in due course. Just before I move on to Liam with his next question, I want to ask a question. See if I can, David Bief, help to you. You talked about an exemption scheme and the ability to exempt small businesses. Will it be helpful to tell us when you think those guidelines need to be in place to make it work next month, this month? Time is not on our side and therefore everything that we can do, as you probably gather from it, we are working at an incredible pace here, throwing a lot of resource at trying to get to the bottom of what can be done to address the concerns of these small businesses. We have been through a month where the level of political uncertainty has made life difficult because a lot of industries have seen the narrative that is out there and slowed down, but we have kept pushing hard and not sat back on this, but as we go through with various narratives that are out there about things being done for small producers, the sooner decisions are made and we can deal with certainty and plan accordingly the better. Very simple terms. I am sure that whoever needs to be watching this committee meeting will be watching it. You need the answer now is what you are saying. Okay, Liam, yours is the next question. Thank you, convener. I would like to go back to something that Jackie Dunbar asked about earlier, which is collections and space. First of all, what do you advise smaller retailers or rural retailers to do if they have particularly large deposits come back or if there is a local event and their space is overfilled? What is the contingency plan if the uplift that is needed is more regular than the usual collection schedule? We have an opportunity for on-demand, so contact us and we will arrange an on-demand collection. If they know about the event, they will get in touch in advance. We are already working with, for example, the guys that organise a fringe to ensure that there is a suitable collection process available for the fringe festival in August. The more notice they can give us of any events, the more we are able to plan and come up with a solution for them. It might be that we can get a mobile RVM in place for that event, for example, so we will absolutely aim to work with them to support that. In terms of if there is more than expected, or if someone turns up with a vanful to a rural community under the legislation, they technically can say no. That is too much. It is not within our scope to take that much back. I appreciate that that might be difficult, but they have that right. Obviously, we will do everything that we can to support them in collections, be that ad hoc or making sure that the frequency is sufficient for them, because we also understand in certain rural areas that there is going to be an element of seasonality. Thank you for that. Perhaps in my next question you could just answer, will there be or confirm that there would not be an extra cost to the retailer for any ad hoc pickup. Secondly, David, the collections have a value, and if that is right, is the retailer liable if the products are stolen? If so, are there insurance products available to cover that risk? If the payment of the deposit back to the retailer is based on the items that are collected and counted, and therefore there is an issue for security, if you put a small store, you cannot just leave this in the car park. In terms of insurance, we are not an insurance provider. I have heard reports that there is a challenge around this additional risk being covered by insurance, but, to be clear, from where we are sitting, we need to collect the material to pay the reimbursement to the deposit, so security of returns on site responsibility for that rest with the retailer. So the risk is on the retailer. Simon, I will put this question to you and you can come back on the ad hoc cost. You have obviously signed a deal with Biffa, who will collect the products. What are the KPIs that CSL has put on Biffa to protect businesses from poor service, if that were to happen? Regularity of collections happening on schedule, strikes or whatever. Given the committee's remit, what obligation on Biffa is there to be net zero? All collections are free. As part of the producer pays, the producer funds the scheme effectively, so there are no charges for any collections, be that for hospitality or retail. If it is an ad hoc collection, that remains free of charge as per all other collections. In terms of Biffa being net zero, the technology and infrastructure right now is not where we would want it to be to run electric and hydrogen. It is very expensive and it is not the best solution right now. We have invested in vehicles, so you have glass top loaders and you have primarily panel vans for the small collections, which are much more efficient. They will be Euro 6 engines. We are working to ensure that when we come round to replacement of those vehicles, we get to a position of are we ready for the infrastructure for electric and hydrogen, can we change and upgrade. In terms of getting to net zero, the solution is predicated on where possible to use as much existing mileage as possible. We are also using retailers for backhaul, so any empty running that is taking place between retail outlets and main recycling hubs will be done primarily by retailers and the rest will be picked up by Biffa, but absolutely they are tasked with moving towards carbon neutral. In terms of KPIs, we will be managing in-day, so the current collection frequency is based on in-day. They will be collected in-day based around somebody's operating hours and based around any collection restrictions, because we are mindful that, particularly in cities, you cannot just put a bin on the street. Biffa will be managed on a daily, monthly and weekly basis to ensure that they are meeting those KPIs and any concerns that we have should be raised directly with Circularity Scotland and we will come back and challenge Biffa in those meetings. In terms of strike planning, should that ever be a concern then we would work with Biffa to get to that point, but certainly from our recruitment process in Biffa and not a unionised environment and the DRS division that has been created and not a unionised environment, so we do not expect that to be an issue, but you never know. In terms of there is some bad press for Biffa in the past, DRS is a completely separate division that has been created to deliver the Dept of Return scheme. I am not going to come to the deputy convener Fiona. Can I ask how the Scottish Government has kept you updated or informed in relation to whether an internal market act exclusion will be granted? Have you sought or received any guidance from the Scottish Government? Have you sought independent legal advice regarding how to prepare for different scenarios? I am bearing in mind that there have been hundreds of millions of pounds of private company investment put into the scheme for a 16th of August go live. Is there a risk of legal action for compensation from any of those private companies of whoever may be concerned in refusing that act exclusion? Thank you. In terms of our knowledge of the internal market act issue, I guess our knowledge of the situation is no different to what is in the public domain. Obviously, when we are speaking to government, we are asking for an update on the situation, a view of what is likely to happen, together with our partners where we are seeking any information we can on where this may go. As I say, I do not sit here today feeling that I know anything that is not in the public domain on that. When this issue came to light, the first thing that I did was called our own lawyers to explain precisely what the situation is, as you would imagine. My understanding is that the regulations remain not the correct terminologies, but they are good and robust and legally enforceable in Scotland. There is a challenge if you try to enforce them with a business south of the border. That is why the exceptions are required. When we are looking at how we expect it to play out, my belief is that our legal advice was that the risk assessment of it not being in place was low, but I recognise that it has become politicised, which, for us, increases the level of risk. We expect the big producers—if the scheme goes live on 16 August—that there may be some exceptions, but certainly the vast majority of producers we expect will operate the scheme, because the regulations remain enforced in Scotland. The vast majority of those producers that we are speaking to recognise their responsibilities here and will act in a responsible way on the understanding that that exemption will be achieved at a point later. Obviously, in terms of detail planning for that particular issue, and whether producers who have made investments, retailers who have made investments or our partner organisations who have made investments, will be coming back to recover funds. That is probably more difficult. Clearly, if the scheme did not happen as a result of that, there is an awful lot of investment out there that will be looking to get recovered. Finally, you said that you want to know whether there are deficiencies. The Scottish grossance federation has been clear to us and, in the past week, it has written to the committee, and there are many outstanding issues that you must know about because it will have told you. Why are they still having those concerns? Can they be resolved by 16 August? Retail handling fees have gone from cost-neutral to actual costs incurred. Reimbursment was not no longer at seven days, but it has moved for monthly in terms of cash flow. Collections may not be on a daily basis, and there are obviously concerns about investment there. The planning regulations for reverse bending machines are benefiting supermarkets, but there are difficulties in more localised collection. I think that the concerns there in terms of the terms and conditions of signing up means that it is a bit of an open checkbook that they are expected to sign when all those things are still outstanding. Why are they still writing to us to express their concerns that those issues are outstanding, and how do you intend to resolve them in time? I will say to you that a short answer would be appreciated. We are continuing to work through all the issues. We have lists of issues coming from various organisations. With the stage that we are at in building this, of course there are still items to be resolved. If we look at the return handling fee, I am happy to discuss that in more detail, but we have an agreed method that our members set out, Scottish Grocer's Federation, one of those members who signed our constitution, which we are instructed by in terms of the process that has to be taken to calculate a fee that aims to put the retailer in a cost-neutral position based on the cost that has to be recovered in the regulations. That is something that has been carried out through a very extensive process involving consultation with retailers. Around the payment terms point, the majority of return points will be paid seven days after we count the returns. What we have done when we have issued the agreement, the document that sits in place between the retailer and the scheme administrator, is that we have set out that for automatic return points we are seeking payment 30 days after return. The return is immediate trigger of that payment 30 days later, so it is not a difference between seven and 30 days, it is collection counting plus seven days to 30. The reason for this is because the vast majority of automatic return points will be operated by the biggest retailers. They have long payment terms with their suppliers and therefore will get a cash flow benefit as the scheme goes live. We recognise that a number of small retailers are investing in those machines. We have spoken, I am speaking to one of the, I won't say who I am speaking to when, we are working our way through speaking to trade associations to make sure that we are able to address the concerns of the smaller retailers that may be impacted by this. One of the challenges we have is that we are trying to conduct effectively a commercial negotiation between some of the biggest companies in the world on the public scrutiny. Therefore, we are having to work on issuing draft contracts and putting these terms out there to get in a position with these very large companies that are not exploiting those small producers who are feeding into the system. We are having to find compromises through it. We have seen with small producers that we can compromise, we will do the same where possible if there are issues with convenience retailers, and we will work through the issues that are on that list as best we can. I am going to come now to the members who are not on the committee. I am going to start with Gage Fagasig and Gage Bram-Midl. Just to follow up some lines from Monica Lennon, Mr Harris, you mentioned twice that circularity Scotland is in a constant dialogue with Government, so I would just like to ask you, just simple yes or no, around if topics have been discussed, and I won't ask you any further details around what was discussed. As Mr Jones alluded to, Biff has bought almost 200 vehicles to transport the return containers. They are not net zero. They are conventional petrol and diesel vehicles that are pumping out emissions. Simple question, has the minister raised this issue with circularity Scotland? Clearly, we have seen reports around Biff's environmental record. They were fined £1.5 million for illegally dumping waste abroad, with a judge describing their actions and I quote as reckless and bordering on the deliberate. Has the minister raised any questions with circularity Scotland around Biffa's environmental record? We have discussed Biffa at length. I don't recall whether that specific issue has been raised, but if you will allow me, we selected Biffa through a very extensive tendering process. We looked at its ability to manage the collections and operating system in Scotland for Scotland's deposit return scheme and its ability to provide the investment that we required as a shell company at the time to meet the obligations that we had been given. At the end of that process, which included a vast range of companies large and small, we reached the conclusion that in Biffa we had the right partner. We were aware of the issues that had arisen. To be clear, they will have no control over where materials are going. They are providing a logistical operation. I was happy that my intention was not to raise further details about Biffa, but you have raised the tendering process. In terms of waste collections, is it not the case that the way that the tendering process was run, only a large multinational business could feasibly win the bid? We looked at a range of operations, so that companies came forward across a broad range of sizes. To be perfectly clear, when we got to the end of this, we selected Biffa because they had the resources to put the investment in place, particularly driven by the operating centres that the new facilities need to be put in place. Within the contract, they are obliged to use existing movements as much as possible, i.e., to contract with local existing providers. I am happy to talk in more detail about the work that we are doing to make sure that that takes place. There is more to this than just appointing one contractor. It is a contractor to run the system, a system that must use as much as possible of what is already there. As far as I can on that, I need to go to Fergus Ewing as far as other questions are concerned. Thank you, convener. One of the main concerns about DRS is that the public will have to pay more than 20p extra for individual beverage items. Mr Harris, can you provide any assurance to the public who increasingly will be coming concerned about that, especially those who are elderly and firm, who do not have access to a car and therefore will have to hulk heavy bulky goods back to a shop that may be some distance away from their home? Can you give assurance about what level of price inflation there will be above the 20 per cent? Some industry figures say above the 20p. Some industry figures tell me it will be 40p, others around 30p, some even more than 40p. Can you give any assurance, Mr Harris, about what the average increase will be above the 20p? The only thing that we have any control over is the fee that we charge the producers. Whether the producer passes that to their customer or not is the producer's decision. And likewise, whether the retailer is applying a markup to that fee or not is entirely a decision for the retailer. Irene, do you want to come in? Sorry, I'm going to let Fergus come back in on that because somebody's got to pay, I guess. Well indeed, and I'm just quoting from a Herald article interview with you, good self, Mr Harris, in which you said, and I quote, if you're accurately quoted, if we take into account the fact that there are costs for operating this system, you anticipate that the producers will seek to pass that on, it will find its way down the chain. So you've already admitted that there will be cost inflation above the 20p. What I'm saying is that members of the public, particularly the poorest, will increasingly, as we move towards this scheme coming into effect, if it does come into effect, be worried about the impact that this will have in the middle of the worst cost of living crisis in living memory? If we look at a cost that's applied across an entire market, and the comment in the Herald, the question that I was asking the point I would make, would I expect that overall producers will seek to recover that from their customer, be that a wholesaler or retailer? Yes, I do. It is not my decision. I can't give any guarantees on that, but if you apply a cost increase universally across the market, common sense says that's what we're going to see. Appreciate it. Time is short and I wanted to cover three brief but important issues. The British class federation advised that this scheme will result in a diminution, a reduction in the amount of glass recycling into new bottles and jars. The reason for that is that there is no remelt target, but also that crushing machines will be used by BIFA. They have procured crushing machines, and that means that the glass will be crushed into fragments so small that they cannot be recycled into bottles of glass. That means that the carbon saving that comes from recycling into bottles, which is 580 kilograms per tonne, will be reduced to around about 4.5 kilograms per tonne, a reduction in carbon savings of over 99 per cent. Given that glass recycling into bottles and jars was estimated by Zero Way Scotland back in 2017 as being between 70 and 90 per cent, isn't there a serious concern that the British class federation, whose advice was taken by the UK Government, who then exempted glass from their proposed DRS? Isn't there a real concern, Mr Harris, that you do not set the policy? I understand that, but you are operating it. Isn't there a real concern that this scheme will actually result in less recycling of glass, not more? First, as you said, we did not set the policy to include glass. I would like to ask Simon to talk about what we are actually doing in terms of managing glass and making sure that that recycling takes place. Biffa has not purchased crushing machines for glass. We expect natural breakage. The people that may use crushers have been hospitality and we are engaging with hospitality to understand how we can adapt those crushing machines, because it is primarily for space, to ensure that fragments are greater than 10 mil or no smaller than 10 mil. We are working with glass reprocessors in Scotland to understand what size they can realistically process back into colour. We are working to understand what they do with anything that does not make it into back into colour. We need to check and up. We will write back to the committee, but we are talking about 98 per cent that is likely to be recycled with 2 per cent, potentially going into aggregate. If we do that, it would be helpful to write to the committee to answer that specific question. I will get the clerks to make sure that that has relayed to you as it was on the official record. Mr Yeung, you were always difficult to keep on time when you were sitting at the far end of the table. I would urge you to do it one further question. Otherwise, you will upset Mr Rittle and he is sat right next to you. One final question.  Some will have to close, some will and are already planning to issue redundancy notices and close depots. They have recently read that you have a reported salary of £300,000. That, as you know, is a matter of public concern, as you said at the beginning.  Can you just clarify for me, is £300,000 the total remuneration or are there pensions and other benefits above that? Is it correct that you are actually working part-time because you have substantial other commercial interests, very substantial other commercial interests, to which presumably you have to devote some time? So can you answer those questions and perhaps give an indication about how many hours per week you devote to the CEO job at a salary of £300,000 of Circularity Scotland? I can confirm that that is my salary. I can confirm that I work full-time in the business. I would say at the moment that I am working in the region of 80 hours a week on Circularity Scotland. I was asked to do this job. Industry approached me and asked me to take the job on. The board set my pay, they made the offer and I accepted that partly because I have had to recruit people to run my other one business, which I have, so that I can devote the time which is needed to this. I was asked by industry to do this. I gave my word. I would do the job and deliver what they asked me to do. That is why I am devoting so much time and allowing people to take care of the other business that I own. On the back of the membership body that we have and the way that we are organised in terms of our corporate governance and the level of professionalism that those member bodies have, you can imagine that we have a similar level of governance within our own business. Therefore, the appointment, the remuneration process is all approved at the board and through the remuneration committee, and that is put to members for their approval as well. All of that is within the commercial lens as well. I can clarify that I did not mishear something. I think that you said 80 hours a week roughly that you are working. Did you answer Mr Ewing's questions about any other payments regarding pensions? Sorry, I may have misheard it. I receive a pension contribution at the same level as every other employer of the company. Thank you, convener. Good morning and good to see you again, Mr Harris. I was considering the conversation that we had last week and considering the implications of what you had to say. I am looking at it from a practical sense. Since then, I had happened to meet up with constituents of my elderly couple who get their groceries delivered by the supermarket.  They are collected by the council. They will be unable to return the items that will be subject to a 20p chart and will no longer be collected by the council. They will be out of pocket. Given that you will be ramping that up from the start, there will be a significant number of people in that particular situation who are unable to take part in the deposit return scheme. Is not the reality in the practical terms? I recognise your role in that in terms of an administrator, but is not the actual practicalities of the scheme in that kind of situation? As Mr Ewing said, those in the poorest in society will be the ones that actually have to pay for the scheme as it ends up there, the last people in the line. The issue of how to deal with home deliveries has been one of the problems of implementing those regulations. Donald, can you talk about where we actually sit at the moment in terms of this situation? The legislation passed by Parliament made it very clear that retailers who deliver remotely online have an obligation to go to consumers' houses and collect those empty containers. It is the first scheme that is attempted to do that at scale. There are one or two other schemes that do it as part pieces. It is a new piece of challenging legislation that is fairly and squarely sitting with retailers to do that. That has been known and laid out for probably about two or three years. Retailers have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to meet that obligation and have been unsuccessful. That was other reasons why recently the minister announced an intent to make some modification. I think that they are going to delay that particular part of the implementation. They are still directly engaged with the retailers to figure out how some of that functionality and capability can be delivered. That entirely sits with retailers to deliver. It is an obligation that they are still working out how to achieve. Our obligation is to go to the depots where those retailers deliver and collect the empty containers from there. We are working as far as we can to support that design effort, but it is a design solution in which the retailers have yet to deliver. Brian, I was going to let you one for the question, because everyone else did, but if you are sufficient on that, that is... Thank you. I think that what we are discussing here is the practicalities of the scheme. What we are looking for is the ability for people to get their deposits back and also to be able to recycle product. In that circumstance, neither of that is happening. There are a huge lot more questions that I was hoping to get answers on. One of the questions would be, do you get a refund of your 20p or do you get a credit against your shopping? It may be that the refund is critical at certain stages to certain people rather than a refund against the shopping, but those are questions that are still to be answered. I think that the committee will have to consider what further work they want to do on this, which we are going to do briefly in closed session after this meeting. I would like to thank the panel there for the evidence that they have given to this meeting. I would ask them to quickly leave so that we can consider what has been said and we will go into closed session. Thank you for your evidence.


Hi everybody, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com. That's me and that is 2020-2021 Panini Mosaic Basketball Hobby Edition, Random Team Break number seven, with the final five one-on-one spots being given away. So let's go. Let's do this. Big thanks to this wonderful group here for making it happen. Appreciate it. And for the break, all 30 teams are in. That's the first dice roll. The second dice roll will be for the giveaway part. But for names and teams, four or two, six times. One, two, three, four, five, and six in final time. Yeah, that Buffalo Springfield song's a classic. Four or two, six times for the teams. One, two, three, four, five, and six. All right, here's the first half of the list right here. And there's the second half of the list right over here. No trade windows in these filler breaks. It's just alphabetized by team, print, and rip. Good luck. Could be some surprises in this. And the break itself, the one-on-one break, will be in a separate video coming up after this. Hi there, hero. We're in Cary, Jr. We've got a Silver Surjabaka, Miles Turner, Steph Curry, and Swagger, Trey Young. All right, nothing too crazy here. But the whole point of this is not necessarily what's in that pack, it isn't. The whole point is who's gonna win those one-on-one spots. So let's gather everybody's names again. New dice, new lists. And it'll be the top five, top five after three. Good luck. One, two, three. Easy. Now from six on down, no dice, sad times. Very close, Steve. But no cigar, thank you everybody for giving this a shot, I appreciate it. Top five though, you're happy because you're in the next video, you're in the next break. Steve Birch, oh you made it, Steve, you're fine. Steve Birch is happy, Nick Stober is happy, Travis is happy, Brian S. is happy, and Travis again, happy times two. Thanks everybody. I'm Joe for jaskyscasebreaks.com. I'll see you in the next video for the one-on-one, bye-bye.


One of the standard methods of solving quadratic equations is known as completing the square, and we'll take a little bit of an overview of that. If I have a quadratic equation like x squared plus 10x equal to 39, I have a number of different ways that I can use to try and solve this equation. So one possibility is I might try to factor. And in fact, this is a fairly common way of solving it. There's just one problem with it, which is that factoring is painful, tedious, and in many cases, it's actually not possible. And if I'm looking at a real problem, in general, I will not be able to factor the equation that arises from a realistic problem. So what I can do is I can always fall back on the quadratic formula, and this is fast, efficient, it always works. But as a third method, I can do what's called completing the square. Now this is somewhat tedious, not quite as bad as factoring, but it's still a tedious procedure. However, the reason that it's important is that completing the square is actually useful for other things. So for example, let's consider this equation x squared plus 10x equals 39. And one way to look at this is to use geometry to represent each side of the equation. And how we'll do that is we'll let these terms correspond to the area of some figure. Now it's even more helpful if we break apart our expressions into individual terms. So for example, this left hand side, I have an x squared, I have a 10x. If I take a look at these two terms individually, I can try and draw a geometric picture of what they look like. So let's think about that. That x squared term, if I want to represent these terms by the area of some rectangle, well I know the area of a rectangle is the product of length and width. So I need to find two quantities, length and width, whose product is going to be x squared. And after thinking about that, the first thing that leaps to mind is the quantity 1 over square root of 253x cubed and square root of 253 times x to the fit. Maybe that's not the first thing that you want to think about. Maybe a little bit better is to use the quantities x and x. So if I multiply length x by width x, I get area x squared. Now because the length and width are equal, the rectangle that I produce here is actually going to be a real square. Likewise, my other term, 10x, I can view this as a rectangle, that's 10 by x. And here's the important thing, one side of that rectangle has with x. So what that means is I can take my square and I can attach this 10 by x rectangle to the end of the square, and I produce a larger figure that looks something like that. And now if I want to think about this problem as something to solve, I have x squared plus 10x equals 39. And so that's this figure here has an area of 39. And I can solve this equation if I can find the length and width of the figure. So there's just one problem with that. I need to find two numbers that multiply to 39. So maybe I have 39 by 1. Well I could actually have other numbers as well. Maybe it's 1 by 39. So maybe this is with 1 length 39. Or possibly maybe it's a 3 by 13 or a 13 by 3. Or maybe a one-fifth by 195 or many, many other possibilities. And the problem is there's too many possibilities for us to figure out which one is the one that we want. Well the problem is that given the area of a rectangle, given that I know the area of this rectangle is 39, I'm not going to be able to find the lengths of the two sides of the rectangle. Unless I happen to have a square. The problem is what I have is not a square. It's x by x and then some. So this thing is definitely not a square. Well what I want to do is I want to make it a square. And this is why this method is actually called completing the square. Now to do that what we're going to do is we're going to take this extension. We're going to cut it in half. And then well what's the key property of a square? The length and width are equal. And so here I originally had an x plus 10 width by x height. I want to make this at least have equal width and height. So what I'm going to do is after I cut this piece in half I'm going to slide this piece over and attach it to the bottom there. Now part of what makes this work is that this piece here is a 5 by x rectangle. So I know that a 5 by x rectangle can fit on the bottom of this square. And what I have is this L shaped region that's called a nomen. And it's the same as the original figure. It's just been moved around a little bit. So the area of this region is still equal to our original value of 39. So maybe I'll just make a note of that. The area of this is equal to 39. And while I'm missing a piece this would be a square x plus 5 by x plus 5. If I had this missing piece here. Well I could go ahead and put that there. The problem is I don't know what the area of that piece is. If only I knew how big this square was. Oh wait a minute. If this length is 5 so is this length. And if this length is 5 so is this length. So this piece here is a square that's 5 by 5. And I know how to calculate the area of that. The missing piece has area 25. And that tells me the whole thing. The complete square has area 39 plus 25. The area is going to be 64. And again once I know the area of the square. I know the length of each side of the square. The square root literally the length of the side of a square with a given area. That square root is going to be 8. So that tells me these sides have to be length 8. And that also tells me that x plus 5 is 8. So I know that x is equal to 3. Well when we go from geometry to algebra. We actually have a slightly more expanded repertoire. So let's see what happens. If we go through the same steps to solve our x squared plus 10x equals 39. I had my square x squared. I had my 10x. And then I split it. I shifted pieces around. That doesn't change anything. The area is still equal to 39. And this time I added that little green square here area 25. And what I got over on the right hand side 39 plus 5 squared 64. Over on the left hand side I have the square of x plus 5. Literally the square of x plus 5. And so that tells me x plus 5 is plus or minus the square root of 84. Because we're looking at algebra. We're no longer restricted to having positive lengths. So I have to indicate that by pointing out that we could have a plus square root of 64. Or a minus square root of 64. And that tells me that x is plus or minus square root of 64 minus 5. Which is to say it's either 8 minus 5 or it's negative 8 minus 5. And my two solutions 3 and negative 13. Now I know some of you are saying oh my god that's a really complicated picture. I don't want to have to draw this horribly complicated picture here. Can I do this without drawing pictures? And the answer is yes. But you have to be a little bit careful. So let's go ahead and take a look at how this might look without drawing the pictures. So here's my equation x squared plus 14 x equals 50. And again if we go through our process of what we did. We split the x coefficient in half. We squared it. We added the squares. We did a little bit of arithmetic over on the left hand side. We have perfect square x squared plus 7 squared. Over on the right hand side we have something we can do arithmetic on. I take the square root of both sides. Plus or minus because I'm living in algebra land. And then I'm going to subtract that 7. And I end up with my two solutions.


Higher Education also called Post-Secondary Education, Third-Level Returgery Education is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completion of Secondary Education. Often delivered at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, conservatories, and institutes of technology, Higher Education is also available through certain college-level institutions, including vocational schools, trade schools, and other career colleges that award academic degrees or professional certifications. Tergery education at non-degree level is sometimes referred to as further education or continuing education as distinct from higher education. The right of access to higher education is mentioned in a number of international human rights instruments. The Un-International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 declares, in Article 13, that higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the Progressive Introduction of Free Education. In Europe, Article II of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted in 1950, obliges all signatory parties to guarantee the right to education. In the days when few pupils progressed beyond primary education or basic education, the term higher education was often used to refer to secondary education, which can create some confusion. This is the origin of the term high school for various schools for children between the ages of 14 and 18 United States or 11 and 18 UK and Australia. Rupert I founded the University of Heidelberg in 1386 higher education includes teaching, research, exacting applied work e.g. in medical schools and dental schools and social services activities of universities.8 Within the realm of teaching, it includes both the undergraduate level, and beyond that, graduate level or postgraduate level. The latter level of education is often referred to as graduate school, especially in North America. In addition to the skills that are specific to any particular degree, potential employers in any profession are looking for evidence of critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills, team working skills, information literacy, ethical judgment, decision making skills, fluency and speaking and writhing, problem solving skills, and a wide knowledge of liberal arts and sciences. Since World War II, developed and many developing countries have increased the participation of the age group who mostly studies higher education from the elite rate, of up to 15 percent, to the mass rate of 16 to 50 percent. In many developed countries, participation in higher education has continued to increase toward universal or, what Troll later called, open access, where over half of the relevant age group participate in higher education. Higher education is important to national economies, both as an industry, in its own right, and as a source of trained and educated personnel for the rest of the economy. College educated workers have commanded a measurable wage premium and are much less likely to become unemployed than less educated workers.However, the admission of so many students of only average ability to higher education inevitably requires a decline in academic standards, facilitated by great inflation. Also, the supply of graduates in many fields of study is exceeding the demand for their skills, which aggravates graduate unemployment, under-employment, credentialism and educational inflation.


We are on FaceTime right now as you can tell places just a tad bit messy but that's okay because we got to hit the road but I absolutely love this Airbnb that we are in and the Bay area it is gorgeous the view is amazing this place is spectacular and I love that it's a studio so it's small it's simple it's minimal our amazing hosts gave us a car here we go so they gave us a car really nice they gave us a bunch of snacks so we don't even have to buy snacks for the Yosemite trip because they're all here so we just got to do a photo shoot now we officially have to go to Yosemite before it gets too late we have some beautiful beautiful pictures oh we're gonna take a picture together all right come on man three two one five thousand feet in the air had to drive up some cliffs some mountains I'm gonna be honest I wasn't prepared for that


What's going on? How are you guys this week? Another day down at Frankie's free-range meat another day in the main stage city for the New World Order, but I'm used to it by now So some of you guys might have seen the farm vlog yesterday couldn't find anyone to process the local beef We were looking to do so I don't think that's gonna happen for a few months. I Ran out of cheese last week and all my meat distributors were out of the stuff I needed so sales were down pretty badly, but Hopefully we can bounce back a little this week and I won't have to start cutting up cows in my backyard anytime soon In good news we ordered the control panel for the dehydrator which should be coming in within two weeks from our Chinese brethren and We have the Pemekin available. Alright, so we opened up one of the Pemekins for you guys Nothing really special to look at Smells a lot like blueberry unhoney and it does have a very pronounced blueberry flavor because we did use Super high quality organic freeze-dried blueberry powder.  It's nice. I mean it really is the perfect survival food It's not super sweet. It's just like subtly sweet. I think this is something that you know kids would really like a lot It's just like the perfect meat candy bar. So let me know how you guys like this I don't know how you guys are gonna buy compared to the best bars, you know Would you know we have the the berry the vanilla the chocolate But since we only have one type of Pemekin for now I honestly I think the sales of the Pemekin even though there's only one type might Outweigh all of the other ones just because I know a lot of you guys don't want like dairy in your diet So we'll see how that goes. So I'll list the Pemekin on frankiesfreerangefoods.com at the top of the page I'm gonna put the price a little high because I have a limited stock right now And I think you guys are just gonna buy it all and I'm not gonna be able to catch up Same with the water key for you guys bought all of the water keeper last week and I really If I put the prices like low and what I want them to be I just I can't keep up with the man So I don't know I don't really want to complain about My inability to get the cuts of meat you guys want but every week it's something else I run out of something I lose customers the big one recently has been lamb brains And even though we have the the freeze-dried brain powder on organsupplements.com I have a lot of stuff. I need to look at in the freezer I took Friday off because I was really exhausted and I was trying to get some sun Saturday I came down here to work a little bit Sunday. I was up at that farm I was actually gonna come down to work yesterday to catch up on some stuff and that that farmer emailed me in the morning I said you know what let me take the drive-up state. I'll visit the farm instead So I just got to go in the freezer and make sure that the inventory on a couple of items is correct And see if we can do a sale item this week We did get the meat delivery from last week. That was delayed We're gonna have some sirloin steaks back in brisket is back in petite tender lamb shank lamb legs and some diced lamb So none of the beef that I've been trying to get but hopefully within two or three weeks I'm a little bit happier with what we have right now. So I Mean I'm feeling okay today I took magnesium and I've known for the past year or two that I've had a magnesium deficiency It's just if I take the magnesium I get insomnia. So That's what happened last night. And I gotta I gotta eventually take it to the point where the insomnia stops, but I'll see how that goes, but I'm gonna Actually drink some water kefir so I get drunk and I'm actually not as Irritated to be down here. We'll have some water kefir. We'll have some dried apples and beef jerky and then Well, we'll go in the freezer. We'll do the inventory and then I'll go downstairs And I'll do some work for organ supplements. So my guys just finished their lunch break. I'm half drunk off water kefir So I'm somewhat competent. They finished most of the orders or they finished all the orders we had before 11 and then we just printed out the orders that were placed yesterday, which was about 30 more So as I mentioned earlier bit lower order volume this week my guys are all finished so we can Just catch up on the stuff We didn't get to do last week as well as make some more pemmican do the water kefir stuff So I guess we could take a quick look through the freezer and then And then maybe we'll look around downstairs a little bit So I feel like I show you guys the same shit every week. So I'll just show you the new stuff We got lamp shanks in these are approximately two pounds each. We got the boneless lamp leg back in These are six pounds each and I have like one customer that just buys all of these so It's whatever and we got Some more of the bone bone in leg of lamb as well Except the new ones are about seven pounds. So they're really really big more of like a centerpiece for More like a centerpiece for Thanksgiving those new ones are right here a lot bigger seven seven pound leg of lamb I think this week we're gonna give away some of these strip steaks Maybe we'll give away one New York strip steak with each order. I think these are about 12 ounces each So keep an eye out for that. I mean it's looking kind of barren in here But I'll try to restock a little bit. This is the Bavette steak. It's really nicely portioned I got to see if I have that stock up. I don't know why you guys aren't buying it as I said We got the pemmigan. I'm going to restock some more key for today whey protein Flexstro salt best bars. We got everything on Frankie's range foods Frankie's naturals We have everything in stock of the clay shampoo the lip balm the tooth powder Hair pomade moisturizing cream as well as deodorant, which I have to make some more of Wi-Fi shielding everything is in stock tank tops underwear Hats we have a limited amount of headnets available. I think and we're also running low on bed canopies and I will try to get some winter clothes samples. I'm not sure if I'm gonna do them organ supplements everything is stocked up We have selenium iodine our anti-oxidant support, which is a very expensive blend of glutathione Nac coenzyme q10 and vitamin C we have our trace minerals blend, which is Boron manganese and molybdenum. These are the main minerals that you lack on a carnivore diet vitamin B complex magnesium Copper glycanate and vitamin D3 I've talked about these in the past before all very very unique supplements that you can't really get half of them anywhere else And we're pretty well stocked up on the bullvine powder as well We have the male virility for testosterone. We have digestive enzymes, which is pancreas We have the third eye, which is the brain glandular is the pituitary Hypothalamus and pineal. We have big brain, which is just brain powder and Guys, I'm not gonna be able to get the veal brains for at least a month and maybe not the lamb brains until next year So this is all we have and this is a limited stock. So we're probably gonna run out within a month immune strength, which is the Thymus and the lymph nodes full spectrum organ blend, which is the liver brain heart kidney spleen pancreas Basically kind of all the main larger organs on the animal and then we have a couple things I need to be organized down here. We have the macronutrient enzyme blend the carnivore enzyme blend for digestion of proteins mainly Thyroid support liver. We have heart and we have kidneys. So everything's really in stock on organ supplements And I'm just gonna organize this a little more female fertility is up there and get everything together Hopefully by the end of this week. I mean things are kind of coming together for me to kind of escape New York for the winter at least Kind of let the businesses go hopefully make some profit But you know with me paying all these employees now the profit margin is not looking too good Which is why I kind of have all these other businesses because basically the meat business seems to be breaking even right now and The income from all the other stuff is kind of just kind of funding it too. So we'll see Next year, maybe hopefully we can get a farm property and get things more profitable It's just you know if everything worked well with the distributors and I was able to just source everything consistently every week Maybe I wouldn't be complaining so much, but We're gonna get the cheese in stock this week. I'm gonna get as much meat in stock as possible from these vendors and Main thing though, we're launching the Pamekin. Hopefully in two or three weeks We can launch the jerky these are gonna be two really big things that might give me that little push I need to keep going but that's gonna be it for today guys So you can see all of my businesses on frank-to-file.com Frankie syringe meat, of course the main one Frankie syringe foods organ supplements Frankie's naturals Wi-Fi shielding So if you guys want to continue to support me, I do appreciate it I mean it's been a while now It's been you know almost over five years on YouTube and a couple years of doing these businesses and I still feel like I'm not at the point that I want it to be I said it before guys like I Anticipated at this point in time to have had enough money to To not have to be doing YouTube videos every day myself to not have to be killing myself every day down here, but Whatever You know, I was hoping to have some sort of financial relief But you know with the censorship with the YouTube taking my ad revenue. It's just it's just a battle after battle But um, I'll stop complaining for today. So I'll see you guys next week with hopefully some slightly better news of meat supply and things going on


Mia Neal and Jamaica Wilson made history at the Oscars on Sunday as they became the first black women to win best hair and makeup for their work on Mareni's Black Bottom. Reacting backstage to the monumental win, Neal said she felt everyone benefits from diversity and wants more of it. Sound designer Nicholas Becker said he really tried to explore the physicality of sound in the film, which sees a heavy metal drummer's life thrown upside down when it begins to lose his hearing. In the animation categories, Pixar's soul won best animated feature, while Traven Fri and Martin Desmond Rose shot live action science fiction drama about police brutality and Will McComack and Michael Gove's animated shot about the effects of gun crime also picked up awards. I think that everybody benefits from diversity, everyone does. And I also think everybody wants it, to be honest. I feel like that has been the thing, and I think that time has kind of sped up in a way in terms of technology and just people being more connected, also people not being afraid to speak up, and then a lot of people who maybe did realize, hey, maybe diversity isn't in this, you know, because things were just the norm. So I think that things are happening and I think it's being well received. He's been fantastic, obviously brought so much to the character, to the part, you know, so much of Joe is weirdly, okay, Joe is way more nerdy than Jamie, Jamie is much cooler, but a lot of the elements of the film of the character were so plus by him, his sense of energy, he just never stops, he doesn't give up, he's an amazing musician, of course he can do the comedy and drama, and we were just very fortunate to be able to nab him. The biggest challenge for me is always to be able to go in the brain of the director and to try to understand what language we have to build for him and how I can combine this with my experience, you know. So I think the biggest challenge have been also to try to make the film as really like a physical experience for the audience. I, you know, when we started this journey to make this film, we knew, I especially knew it would be a film that would be difficult for people to watch, difficult for people to, you know, politically even engage with, and for it to have done what it's done and for us to be here holding these for a movie as potent and as serious as our film is from the academy, I think it's unbelievable, I think it's amazing to think that we could be standing here today holding Oscars for a film about police brutality. I think that's incredible.