ers who deliberately did not pay are being excused for free. I completely agree with them that hard-working taxpayers should not be forced to subsidise other people's tax avoidance and the SNP's grossly irresponsible rhetoric. That leads me on to another point that is yet unanswered by the Government. Will those who paid their tax in good faith be reimbursed? The Government simply cannot claim it is acting fairly if it will nullify some people's debts and ignore those who paid. As we have already pointed out, there is a strong possibility of legal challenges seeking compensation on this matter. On the subject of compensation, it is important that we fully understand the implications of this bill for local authorities' finances in relation to the compensation that the Government is presently offering. At first glance, the £869,000 being offered is only 0.2 per cent of the total uncollected £425 million, which I think answers Alex's point. That does not seem to be nearly enough. That was the sum that local authorities said was the amount that they would collect through collection procedures. The £425 million, which the member quotes, the vast bulk of that is uncollectible. I accept that a lot of it is uncollectible, but I am really trying to get the point of principle that we should not be rewarding people who do not pay tax, which is what we have not collected. On the point that is projected in the amount of informal sporadic payments that have been made to local authorities, which is not included in the £869,000 once-and-for-all settlement, furthermore, the compensation figure completely ignores the potential knock-on effects regarding future tax payments to local authorities. Writing off community charge debt would set a damaging precedent. That is my real point, whereby people who avoid paying tax can expect perhaps their debt to be cancelled by a future Government. This concern that there is a risk of losing council tax has been echoed by councils, yet the Government has explicitly ruled out compensation being given to local authorities that suffer from a knock-on effect in council tax collection. I would also like to raise serious concern about the process by which this bill has been brought for Parliament. The SNP tried to use the high levels of democratic engagement in the referendum to justify this bill, yet they have not even put it out for public consultation. Despite all of their rhetoric, the SNP is neglected to gather and analyse the views of the public. I think that this policy is typical of a Government that repeatedly chooses grandstanding instead of delivering genuinely fair policies in Scotland's best interests. I am afraid that we have just about used up what extra time we had, so members really need to take interventions in their own time from now on. John Mason, to be followed by Sandra White. I have to say that I speak wholly in support of this bill today. Sometimes, I think that members might think that I am occasionally cool towards certain pieces of Government legislation, but I am happy to say today that I have no reservations about this legislation. Principles have been mentioned as a word already by a few speakers. I think that there are a number of principles at work here that we need to take them all into account. First of all, we should all pay our taxes set by an elected Government, whether we like them or not. That is justice, and Gavin Brown has mentioned that point. The problem that Gavin Brown has missed is that there are other principles at stake that he seems to be ignoring. For example, community charge or the poll tax was a particularly unfair tax, taking no account of ability to pay. Another principle is that a lot of the outstanding tax is unlikely in practice ever to be paid, and there is little point throwing good money after bad. The collection has fallen every year from £4.6 million in 34 to £327,000 in 1314. I have to say that I was slightly disappointed by Cameron Buchanan's speech just now, which is normally quite good. However, the reality is that all bad debts get written off eventually. Most of us pay our electricity bills, a few people do not. The electricity company is right off the bills eventually. That is not just to do with the poll tax. Bad debts get written off normally. Cameron Buchanan, I thank you for taking any intervention. It was a point of principle rather than that to the amount. I felt that the principle should not be written off. That is what I was trying to make. John Mason.  That is the kind of logic that we are seeing from the Tories today. Another principle is that we do not want to discourage people from registering to vote, and another principle is that there has to be a place for mercy in our systems. We know that, in the health sector, people cause themselves health problems, but we still help them. We know that, in debt, some people get into debt by their own fault, but we still have a responsibility as a society to help those people. How do we balance up all those principles? Is this the right bill at the right time? I have to say that it is the right course of action. The time being was clearly prompted by the talk of pursuing new voters, but 10 councils had stopped pursuing those debts already. Although the gross value of the debt is £425 million, I understand that all of that has been provided for, and the net debt in the accounts is nil. There has clearly been consultation with councils on the detail of the bill, and the question has arisen should there have been more consultation on the principle of the bill. On the one hand, I have had one or two constituents objecting, but on the other hand, the committee only got 12 submissions, which suggests that, for many people, it is a dead issue. On the whole, I am in favour of consultation, and I can think of some acts that have been passed by this Parliament that needed a lot more consultation. However, this Parliament, as it has to be said, is much better than Westminster at consultation—look at stamp duty land tax—and sometimes you just need to step out and take action. In the consultation responses, Glasgow City Council, commenting on the increase in voter registrations, said that it did not think that it was poll tax non-payers who were re-engaging, but, much more, the additional registration were younger voters. They also said that their debt policy is aimed at breaking the cycle of debt for the individual and to direct resources at current collections, which benefits people and services. I have to say that I completely agree with that approach by Glasgow. The £869,000 that is being refunded to councils is not big money, and most councils in Caesla seem happy with the split. We did hear grumbles from North Lanarkshire and a few others. However, my feeling is that they were being a bit over-optimistic as to how much they might have collected in the future. I do think that it is a bit odd that Dundee is getting £305,000 for its £11 million debt, and Glasgow with £125 million debt is only getting £20,000, but I suspect that we can live with that. I am happy to give my support to this bill today, and I do feel that it is a good balance between justice and mercy. I reiterate one sentence that the cabinet secretary said in his opening speech. He mentioned that even if a person could be traced, if no attempt had been made to recover outstanding arrears from a debtor within the last 20 years, the local authority cannot pursue the debt any further. I think that that is something that we have to remember, and that is why the bill is a very sensible proposition. Another reason to end the collection of this iniquitous tax is that it is completely undemocratic to threaten people who register to vote in the referendum with sheriff officers for a debt that is over 20 years old. I think that we have to remember that as well. Kenny MacAskill mentioned that the poor tax was introduced to Scotland in 1989, one year before England and Wales, and we were used as guinea pigs here in Scotland. We should never forget that at any other point at all. I want to pick up on something Alex Rowley who said that it was absolutely correct when he mentioned that the tax was an attack on the poor. How can it be right that someone who stays in a mansion, a castle even, and I won't name any names, actually pays the same as someone who could live in a one or a two-bedroom house? That's why it was a very, very iniquitous tax. I want to share some of my experiences from those days in the poll tax. Jess MacAskill said that I was part of the campaign that can pay, won't pay. Some of us had our wages arrested. Most of us paid 10 per cent surcharge at then, so there was more money paid from that. Some of us even had warrant officers and warrant sales in our houses. We entered into that campaign to support the people, and I was a council at the time that I represented, but to support the people in Scotland from this iniquitous tax. I went in marches with many, many other people, members of the public. I also stood outside doors where there were people, young mothers with kids, where warrant officers came to their doors. I and others stood outside their doors to stop them from removing goods from their houses. Young mothers who couldn't afford to go out and buy a new cooker or whatever it may be, and we ended up getting a list that we gave round doors that said, if a warrant officer comes to your door and none of us are here with you, show them this list, make sure they cannot take these essentials from your house. We worked with our communities to enable them to ensure that they did not get the essentials that they needed for their families, for their kids and for themselves, to take them out of their houses. I am proud of the part that I and many others played in that campaign in the iniquitous tax. If it had not been for the ordinary people out there, you could probably say that it was a grassroots campaign, because it really affected the people on the ground. People who could hardly afford to get the luxuries that lots of people who were paying the same as them could very well afford, who could not afford luxuries, and yet they were being penalised by the iniquitous poll tax that came from a Westminster Government. I want to thank every single person, not just us, who were in the can pay, can't pay campaign, can pay, will pay. I want to thank all the ordinary people who saw this as an unjust and unfair and immoral tax and stood together and defeated it and brought down the Thatcher Government. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Thank you. I now call Richard Baker to be followed by Richard Lyle. As a new member of the Finance Committee, which convener informs me, I am highly privileged to be a member of, I have had the chance to hear the evidence on this bill. Along with the great majority of members who have spoken today, I do support this legislation. I think that it is quite wrong to link the issue of outstanding community charge debt to electoral registration. Indeed, I have some issues with local authorities using electoral roles to pursue wider debts as well. In my view, such matters should not affect efforts to encourage as many people as possible to take part in a democratic process, and that is why I raise with the cabinet secretary whether other legislative solutions have been sought to address the issue that this bill rightly seeks to resolve. I think that it would also have been legitimate for the Scottish Government to look at other ways to ensure that local authorities did not use the electoral register after the referendum to pursue those debts. While I support this bill, I think that it is regrettable, as others have said, that there was in effect no consultation at all with anyone before its introduction. I understand the reasoning entirely behind acting speedily, but the fact that COSLA was simply informed in a phone call of the Government's intention to legislate on the same day that the announcement was made to Parliament is, in my view, not acceptable. Indeed, the committee refers to that in its report. To be fair to the cabinet secretary himself, I acknowledge to committee that that was not optimal. Indeed, I suspect that, given the place that the Scottish Government was at when the announcement was made, he may not have had a huge amount of influence over the arrangements around the former First Minister's statement. I believe that there was also a case for at least curtailed public consultation on the bill, but, given that this is a matter of great importance for local authorities, whatever our views on the merits of this legislation, consultation with COSLA should have taken place. It was frankly disrespectful to councils not to have done so, because there has been no great divide politically amongst councils in pursuing this debt. Indeed, the council that will receive the greatest proportion of the financial settlement is done by the City Council, which is an SNP administration, because it has been the most assiduous in pursuing these debts. Indeed, when the SNP were in the administration in Aberdeen and convening the finance committee there, the authority recovered nearly £155,000 in poll tax arrears between 2007 and 2012, but, of course, other authorities have, in effect, ceased collecting these debts already. While I think that it is right that a committee raised the question of fairness for those who, despite opposing the poll tax, paid their debt whereas others who did not are now exempt, I think that the issues around practicality are rightly taken into consideration. Many authorities have found that the costs of collection have not justified pursuing this debt, but it is also important that we send out a message that this is an exceptional circumstance, with regard to an historic, deeply unpopular and, in my view, a deeply unfair tax, and that, looking forward, we must all pay our contributions to local authority taxations so that our councils can carry out their vital work. In short, I am disappointed that there was not proper consultation with councils on this bill. I think that it would have been appropriate to give at least some time to look at other legislative options, but, ultimately, I agree with the principle of what this bill is seeking to do. In essence, it is simply giving legal effect to the approach taken by most local authorities already in Scotland. If looked at from the perspective of ensuring that poll tax is now fully consigned to history, that can be no bad thing. Thank you very much. Before we turn to closing speeches, I call Richard Lyle. Thank you, Presiding Officer. A form of poll tax was first levied in 1275, then 1379 and was resurrected in 1641 in England to finance the raising of an army against Scottish and Irish uprisings. Now a form of poll tax was first levied in Scotland in 1699. Poll tax, officially known as the community charge, was a tax to fund local government in the United Kingdom, instituted in 1989 by the then Tory Government of Margaret Thatcher. It replaced the rates that were based on the notional rental value of a house. The new poll tax was first trialled in Scotland and replaced the rates from the start of 1989, 1999 financial year, by a Tory Prime Minister that Scotland never voted for. It was highly contentious, opposed by many in Scotland, and after being introduced in England where its introduction caused riots in the streets of London, it was rightly bind after the resignation of Margaret Thatcher by the new John Major Government. After 20 years, we still have councils trying to collect this inequitous tax. The bill, introduced by the SNP Government, puts an end to the scourge that is the poll tax, an old tax that is hated by many in Scotland. From what we saw in the referendum in Scotland's independence, when millions of Scots were engaged and for many felt it was the first time in a long time that they had something to get out and vote for, it was ever a worrying story to hear that some local authorities here in Scotland intended to use the increase in democratic participation and, in particular, in registration on the electoral register to pursue old poll tax debts. I would like to take the time to highlight another issue, and it is indeed an important issue. That is the need to seek the power from Westminster to control the electoral register and, in particular, to remove the ability of the register to be sold to private debt collectors. It is not right that the people of Scotland should be put off or the scourge from participating in Scotland's thriving democracy, a result of the fear of being pursued by private debt collectors. As members will know, councils are well within the rights to use current information to assess council tax liability. Unlike the imposed and hated poll tax, the council tax is one that forms a key part of local authorities' finance. It is also a tax that this Government has continued to take action on whilst it has been in office. Since 2007, it has frozen the council tax, and the council tax reduction scheme protects over 500,000 of our most vulnerable citizens from increased liabilities following the UK Government's abolition of the council tax benefit. It is indeed in stark contrast to the action of the con-dem Westminster Government that continues to impose its austerity agenda on the people of Scotland, an agenda that I hope the people of Scotland will reject in May. The bill writes a wrong. A wrong has been too long in its insistence. It compensates councils for its standing immense in line with current collection rates. It also means that the people of Scotland will no longer be pursued for a tax that they did not want, did not vote for, and I believe that this Government has a record of taking action to protect the people of Scotland, and in supporting this bill today, that is exactly what we will continue to do. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Many thanks, and we now turn to closing speeches. I call on Gavin Brown, five minutes please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Let me begin my closing then with a quote from North Lanarkshire Council on the written evidence that they submitted to the Finance Committee, where they said that they find it incongruous that a bill considered necessary as a result of the high levels of democratic engagement, the bill itself will not be subject to a formal public consultation, and they asked the question, how are the views of the public, the majority of whom have made payment of their community charge liability, to be understood? I think that that's a perfectly fair question, Deputy Presiding Officer, and one that merits an answer from the Scottish Government. They said that there wasn't time to do so, yet the Finance Committee managed to have a consultation on that very same subject. That consultation, albeit a fairly swift one, raised a number of issues. I'm happy to give way. Mark McDonald. The member is quite right that the Finance Committee undertook a consultation. Can the member refresh the memory as to how many members of the public responded to that consultation? The Finance Committee from memory had 12 responses in total, of how many were members of the public. I would probably say about four of those were members of the public. I may be not exactly right on that. However, the point is this, the number of people that will respond to a Finance Committee consultation is surely bound to be smaller than the number that respond to a formal Government consultation on a piece of legislation. If you contrast the number of people who responded to the Finance Committee on the Smith proposals were probably somewhere in the region of 20, perhaps 25, the number of course who responded to the Smith commission itself is over 14,000. Had there been a formal public consultation from the Scottish Government, we would have got considerably more than we got to the very shortened Finance Committee publication. I would draw attention of the member to some committee consultations, which, where there are very strong views on an issue, can achieve a very strong response. I recall from memory the equal opportunities committee in the last session managed a 12,000 response consultation. The Finance Committee's consultation pales in comparison. I disagree with those numbers, but my point is this, if we have a considerable number of issues coming out of a mere 12 responses, how many other issues would have come out from a formal public consultation that the Government could have addressed? I do not think that it is good enough the way in which it has approached it. For the Finance Minister to say when he was speaking to the committee and asked that question to simply say, we are where we are, I do not think that it is good enough for this Scottish Government or indeed any Scottish Government if we are going through a formal programme of government. Returning to the principle, Deputy Presiding Officer, members have stated that they do not find the £425 million figure helpful. I accept that that figure clearly is not the amount that can be collected. I suspect that the majority of it cannot be collected, but the point is this, if only 10 per cent of it is collectible, that is still a pretty sizable sum, and what the Government does not know and what the Government has not been able to say is what percentage of it do they think is collectible. I do not think that it is good enough to just say that we do not think that most of it will be collectible. They must have some idea of what could be collected. I am grateful to Mr Brown. The local authorities have told us that they have payment arrangements in place that would draw an £869,000 worth of Portax debt out of the £425 million. Given what I said to Parliament already in my speech and in my contribution to the French Committee that once a 20-year period had elapsed from connection to particular debts, it is impossible to resurrect those debts to be collected, can Mr Brown now tell us how much he believes with that information it is possible to collect out of this debt? Does that not make the case for the pragmatic decision of getting rid of the debt? The Government is unable to do the work to tell us how much could be collected, but they expect one MSP to be able to put an exact figure on it. Just to correct him, he is getting uptight. He is getting uptight, Deputy Deputy Presiding Officer, which is always a sign, as it was at First Minister's Questions today. What he said was that COSLA was asked how much they think they would collect. Well, they were not asked that. They were asked how much do you actually have formally in place for collection mechanisms. That is not the same question as how much do they think they could collect. If I am wrong on that, I am happy to give way. The point that I am making to Mr Brown is that, given what I have said to Parliament, that, after the period that has elapsed from the debts being incurred to now, it is impossible to resurrect debt collection arrangements. We have asked local government what they can collect, and they have told us that they can collect. Cabinet Secretary, please draw to a close. Mr Brown, you need to draw to a close. I think that COSLA were asked to the exact question that I put there, but in closing, let me say this. We are deeply concerned about the impact that it could have on COSLA's collection. He says today that COSLA is linked to ability to pay, yet, just a couple of years ago, Mr Swinney and Mr Salmond specifically said that COSLA is an inherently unfair tax, with a very loose connection to people's ability to pay. Let me close with one final thought. That really must be a quick point. He attempts, Deputy Presiding Officer, to talk about principle. We don't want people to fear being on the electoral roll for a decades-old debt, yet he is very comfortable, and his Government is extremely comfortable, using that same electoral roll, the expanded electoral roll, to collect decades-old debt for council tax. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and I start by thanking the Finance Committee and the Clarks for their work in scrutinising the bill to take us to stage one proceedings today. I am very clear that the intention behind the bill was absolutely to respond to the concerns when some local authorities considered using the increase in voter registration to collect historic poll tax debt, and I think that that would have sent the wrong message about democratic participation. However, it is interesting, having said that, that COSLA does not actually believe that legislation is necessary. Indeed, the former First Minister himself, I think that a day after the announcement, did not believe that legislation was necessary either, as he noted that the bill would have no practical effect, and I quote, because there is already a legal bar on chasing debts that are more than 20 years old. Glasgow City Council, in one second, also did not believe that the increase in voter registration could be attributed entirely to non-poll tax payers. In fact, much of that was suggested to be a very welcome increase in the number of 16 to 18-year-olds registering to vote for the first time, and, of course, they were not even born when the poll tax was introduced, never mind being in debt as a result. I understand that that applies to the minister, who himself was six at the time. I am happy to give way. I am slightly older than six, but not by much. In terms of the issue around prescription that Jackie Baillie raises, we heard in evidence at the finance committee that a number of local authorities reapplied for the summary warrant in order to circumvent the 20-year prescription. Although she is technically correct, that issue remains live in a number of local authorities who had circumvented through reapplying for the summary warrant. I accept that, because, although the premise for taking action might not be entirely evidence-based, I do think that there were concerns, and that is why I have sympathy for the cabinet secretary's position, and Scottish Labour will support the general principles of the bill. However, in supporting the bill, we are alive to the concerns that have been identified by the committee and expressed by members in this chamber today. I hope that those will be addressed by the minister in his closing remarks. Firstly, there is this question of consultation. There is no getting away from it. I think that it is fair to say that, despite Mr Swinney's best attempts at a very elegant explanation, the lack of consultation with stakeholders at the start of the process was undoubtedly unhelpful. Never mind the lack of consultation more generally. In the circumstances, I understand the need for speed, and particularly in ensuring that we reach a conclusion at stage 3 timiously. However, I do not accept that there could not have been a much longer conversation with local government, or at least a more detailed one, before the bill was announced. Moving on, let me agree with the cabinet secretary. I think that the poll tax has run its course. That was a tax that was totally discredited, it was overwhelmingly rejected, it was then and is now an unfair tax. However, I acknowledge, as many others have done today, that those who paid their poll tax and, in many cases, struggled to do so will feel that this decision is unfair. Alec Rowley was right to thank them for paying, because they helped to sustain local services on which we all rely, like schools and care homes. However, it is the case that it is unlikely that those debts would be collected at any point in the future. The amount that is collected is, without doubt, declining to very small numbers indeed. There are legal and practical difficulties in collecting debts that old. In some cases, those debts were inherited from predecessor authorities. They were paper-based, they weren't computer-based, so there are real practical issues about collection. The majority of local authorities have, rightly in my view, focused on pursuing council tax debt, because there is much more chance of recovery. I think that Kenny Gibson is right to raise concerns about the potential impact on council tax collection. Local authorities do very well to achieve aninyear collection rate at 95.2 per cent, rising by the time that they take appropriate measures to something like 97 per cent indeed. I will be interested to know that, in 2013-14, of the 10 local authorities that had ceased collecting the poll tax debts, nine of them were actually above that. That is interesting, and that bears out my point exactly. That is where I think we should focus. It is right for Kenny Gibson to raise the point. I do not want to dwell on the difference of opinion between COSLA and the Cabinet Secretary, but I do not think that we would want any unforeseen consequences of the bill that we passed today to have an impact on those very good collection rates. I wonder whether the Government would not commit to should that happen as a direct result of this bill to at least having a dialogue and reviewing the position with COSLA. I think that that would certainly be helpful. There were concerns, of course, about whether councils had been adequately compensated, but I know that COSLA have agreed the amount with the Scottish Government. Finally, I think that Alex Rowley hit the nail on the head. The real debate is not really about this bill today. It is important, though that is. The real debate is about how we finance local government. I welcome the commission that the Cabinet Secretary has set up, and we will participate in that fully. The importance of local government is that they provide essential services such as teachers for our schools, such as home help for our older people, such as maintenance workers to clear our streets, and there can be no more important time than now when our streets are covered in snow and ice. It is local government who have borne the brunt of the SNP Government's cuts. I, too, this evening, and indeed at stage 3, look forward to consigning the poll tax to the dustbin of history. There is a wider problem that the SNP does not really want to talk about, and it is something that we must debate urgently, and that is the underfunding of local government as a direct result of the choices made by the SNP Government. Thank you very much. I now call Mark O'Biaggy to wind up the debate. Minister, you have until 5 pm. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thank everyone for what has been a debate with many perspectives, but I want to take us back as my starting point to the important starting point of the bill and where we were then, and the motivation to maintain the integrity of our electoral register. It is such an important point that we cannot understate it. It is the basis of not just my remarks but our elections, the constituencies that are structured, and the democracy of this country itself. Last year, people who had never taken part dared to step forward and have their say on their nation's future. Instead, they were hit by what was more an unquiet remnant of our political past. We had 85 per cent turnout—4.3 million on the register and all-time high—but to listen to some people, they should have marched into the polling station and been handed a bill rather than a ballot paper. In the aftermath of the referendum, there were different responses, but let me assure Malcolm Chisholm that there were responses that led to concerns. Some were gung ho, but others expressed a doubt and were drawn back as local authorities to the statutory duty that exists on local authorities. In 1987 and 1992, acts made it a duty of every local authority to collect the taxes that they owed. To answer Jackie Baillie, that is why we must put the issue beyond doubt by extinguishing that liability entirely. My second point is that poll tax is a dead tax.  In a way, it is not. If I want to dare to contradict the Deputy First Minister who described it as a dead tax, maybe I would describe it as a bit of an undead tax. It is like a ghost that is clanking its chains in the night to disturb the living. Who is it that gets kept up at night by those howls? It is surely by now not the people who had the ability to pay, and it is time that this was laid to rest. There is a difference between reward and recognising reality. Mark McDonald very succinctly pointed out that bad debt is a concept in accountancy. Gavin Brown, with his well-lodded finance background, I am sure, is well aware of that. It was also set out by John Mason that this is how electricity companies and utilities will work. I have to say that, in looking at the experience of debt right off, it has been good for some. This note here from the House of Commons library cites one occasion that there was a £5 billion debt right off in the prices of the day. It happened in 1989 also the notorious first year of the poll tax. Who was it that had their debts written off that day? The water companies? Who buy? The UK Conservative Government and why? So they could be privatised. Debt right offs can be used as an instrument of policy, and I have to say I might not have agreed with that one, but in these days this is the time. John Mason summed it up contribution on the principle of mercy, but even in accountancy terms when you've got £2 collectible out of every £1,000, administrators will tell you that it's time to liquidate, and that £425 million, which is not just a ghost, it's a phantom number, can finally be still. If we have councils listening to this who are concerned about future collection of council tax, particularly historic council tax, do they not think that they will be concerned when the minister says that debt right off can be used as an instrument of public policy? Administrations have used that from different purposes. There's been the right off of housing debt. There's been the right off for privatisations. Of course, to respond to the thrust that has been the basis of everything Gavin Brown has said other than his worship of the poll tax, it is of course that people should pay their tax. Kenny McCaskill and Sandra White set out the campaign that was run by the SNP at the time. It supported non-payment as a form of protest and as a temporary one to withhold the tax until it was abolished and then pay it back, or pay it back plus 10 per cent, in the case of some particularly enthusiastic protesters. As Alex Rowley said, we should recognise those who did that. Liking doesn't come into it. The tax was imposed on the mandate of a Parliament who did have a right to rule, which this party has always sought democratically to remove. However, when it comes to tax avoidance in the Conservatives, why are they showing such enthusiasm for this particular issue here? Why is this pleasure in harrying people to the modern-day equivalent of a debtor's prison? There's a cast briefing that I saw from September 2013 that highlighted UK Government figures that benefit fraud was £1.6 billion in 2012. Campaigners are often contrasting that with figures like the ones from the National Audit Office, who in 2012 reported that HMRC had 41,000 identified open tax avoidance cases totaling £10.2 billion. When the Conservative UK Government is better able to collect that tax, then perhaps we will be sure that their motivation is healthy public revenue and not simply picking out a certain group of people who are liable for extra attention. We have to remember as well that this is not the first step on this road. The Scottish Government will not be the first authority to do this, at best where the 11th—11th—ten councils already have. Western Bartonshire has stated a similar support. More than that, 24 of 32 local authorities last year collected less than £10,000. That is not a great spring of cash. It is a trickle, and it is a trickle that is drying up £1.3 million in 2009-10, then £1.2 million, £900,000, £512,000, £327,000. The time will soon arrive when collection costs outweigh any remaining revenue. After 20 years, the debt is simply not collectible in the main. That is already the law. Deits expire, even taxes. What the bill does is draw a line under the issue and say enough. Malcolm Chisholm's starting point is also my conclusion—the singular unfairness of the poll tax. Marx is not someone who had many adherents in the UK Government in 1989, but there were many who professed to adhere to another philosopher. Adam Smith, whose first maxim on tax said that the subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the Government as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective abilities. The campaigners called it the poll tax because they knew the history of the poll tax. It was the name given to the tax levied in England from 1377 that Richard Lyle mentioned that required the payment of a sum of a groat to finance the war on France. People didn't stand for it then and they revolted, but you can go further back. Theophonies the Confessor in 722 A.D. Chronicle that when the emperor in Constantinople sought to levia poll tax on his domains in Italy, it was met by outrage and rebellion. The poll tax was a tax so bad that it didn't just make what Tyler burned the temples of London, it made Rome declare independence from the Roman Empire. Anyone should have known better. Hansard in 1991-92 shows that 6.34 million people received some kind of benefit. That meant that everybody else was paying the same whether you were the spiritual inheritor of what Tyler or were living in an imperial palace. If I am talking about history here, it is because for me this is. When the first poll tax bills dropped through doors in April 1989, I was more interested in the sandpit in Mrs Diggle's classroom or whether Optimus Prime was the best leader of the Autobots. That this supremely unfair tax is still being used is depressing. Let's go back to where this started. Instead of dwelling on it, let's remember that participative outflow, that democratic spirit, and if £869,000 to write off a bad debt is the price of our democratic renewal, I say it's one worth paying. That concludes the debate on the community charged debt Scotland bill and the history lesson. It's now time to move on to the next item of business. The next item of business is consideration of motion number 12171, in the name of John Swinney, on the financial resolution for the community charged debt Scotland bill. I call on John Swinney to move the motion. The next item of business is consideration of motion number 12187, in the name of Shona Robison. On the health and social care safety and quality bill, private members bill, UK legislation, I call on Shona Robison to move the motion. The next item of business is consideration of motion number 12182.1, in the name of Alex Ferguson, which seeks to amend motion number 12182, in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, on the childcare inquiry being agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment number 12182.1, in the name of Alex Ferguson, is as follows. Yes, 15. No, 63. There were 31 abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed to. The next question is at motion number 12182, in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, on the childcare inquiry being agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion number 12182, in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, is as follows. Yes, 96. No, 0. There were 14 abstentions. The motion is therefore agreed to. The next question is at motion number 12176, in the name of John Swinney, on the community charge debt Scotland bill being agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion number 12176, in the name of John Swinney, is as follows. Yes, 96. No, 14. There were no abstentions. The motion is therefore agreed to. The next question is at motion number 12171, in the name of John Swinney, on the financial resolution for the community charge debt Scotland bill being agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. The next question is at motion number 12187, in the name of Shona Robison, on the UK health and social care safety and quality bill, private members bill, UK legislation being agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. That concludes decision time and I now close this meeting.


The fastest anyone has ever traveled in a vacuum-tube train is only 172 kilometers per hour, while standard high-speed rail trains exceed 250 kilometers per hour.  In order to satisfy a creative writing assignment, a freshman physics student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute named Robert H. Goddard composed a short story titled The High-Speed Bet about a futuristic train, a rapid transit tube. In the story, a brilliant engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur named Mr. Sibley explains the operation of the train to a wrapped audience before the first trip. A 10-foot diameter tube is evacuated of air, then a cylindrical train car is levitated and catapulted forward on a electromagnets, achieving a peak velocity three times faster than the speed of sound and completing the trip from Boston to New York in under 10 minutes. Goddard passed his creative writing class and received his degree in physics four years later, in 1908. The vac train has become a frequent fixture of science fiction stories since then, so much so that it's now used as a sort of visual shorthand for futuristic transit. The Jetsons, Jurassic World, Doc Smith's, Skylark series, Futurama, Portal, Meet the Robinsons, all sorts of media has portrayed technologically advanced societies traveling by getting in pods and launching themselves down shiny, depressurized tubes. It's gotten to the point that we can totally skip any exposition for that tack in the story. When we see tubes, we know what's up. The concept of a vac train is so easy to understand and illustrate that it's prompted numerous individuals and organizations to try to make it a reality over the past century and change. Robert M. Salter proposed the Planetrain Initiative, a laser-aligned subterranean vac train tube that would allow travel from New York City to Los Angeles in an hour. Swiss Metro floated the idea of something similar in the late 70s, while Japanese engineer Yoshihiro Kiotani drew up a proposal for a vac train tube anchored 300 meters below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Gerard O'Neill of O'Neill Cylinder fame founded a company called VSE International in 1991 to develop the technology, followed by billionaire James R. Powell, E.T.3, Franco Cortana, the North University of China, and until recently Hyperloop One. A company that has, after a decade of work and $500 million of investment announced that they're closing up shop and selling off assets. To date, not one of these efforts has resulted in a successful transit system. With so many historic failures on the scoreboard, it's worth reflecting on the fact that while there is a precedent for sci-fi inspiring real tech, and while stories about vac trains sure seem plausible, they may turn out to be totally impractical to build in reality. I mean, yes, the physics makes sense, but there's a long list of details and implementation that might be dealbreakers. The economic or ecological costs of mass producing kilometers of giant airtight cylinders, the maintenance costs of keeping both train and tube in good working order, the challenges posed by passenger emergencies or loading times or weather damage, any of these factors could make the technology a pipe dream. But it sure doesn't feel that way, with all these companies and resources being thrown at making it happen. There's some interesting resonance between the real world and fiction here, a phenomenon detailed by media and technology theorist Sun Ha Ha. Because back trains are a convenient trope for sci-fi stories, appearing over and over whenever an author needs a futuristic vibe, they've started to seem feasible, desirable, inevitable maybe, as if on a long enough timeline, the universe will eventually produce a civilization advance enough to do this tube train thing. Psychologists have found that repeating a statement over and over can increase its perceived validity. Maybe something similar is happening here. Because of that tantalizing just out of reach feeling prompted by all these stories, people with the means to launch massive R&D projects try again and again and again to overcome the barriers necessary to make vac trains real, even if those barriers are actually pretty difficult, maybe in ways that make the entire project a losing proposition. Even if on balance, most people think a futuristic tube train would be less valuable to the world than another basic run-of-the-mill bullet train. In episode 237, we investigated the peculiar way an imaginary distinction can gain a sort of physical reality over time, if people treat it as if it were real, something like a self-fulfilling prophecy, what philosophers call reification. There's no law of physics or geology that you could use to explain a phenomenon like borders. None of the particles in the Earth's crusts behave differently if this or that person or country claims ownership over them. But the ways humans behave around the idea of borders can shape the land itself. A mining pit abruptly stops at an arbitrary latitude. The hillside in the right zip code gets reinforced, while the one right next door gradually erodes. Similarly, the recurring depiction of vac train-like technology in both fiction and the real world can help pave the way for still more vac train stuff, regardless of whether it's possible or a good idea. For example, starting around 2013, the much-maligned California high-speed rail project has been repeatedly delayed by an alternate proposal. Maybe instead of a run-of-the-mill 350 km per hour bullet train, we could develop and build a vac train instead. Maybe it would be faster, maybe it would be quicker to build, maybe it would be cheaper, maybe it would take up less space, if it ever worked. At all. Despite general skepticism among the project's handlers, just humoring the Hyperloop One proposal and its supporters has chewed up resources, soured public opinion, installed construction. Of course, the glacial pace of the California HSR project will eventually be used as evidence that conventional high-speed train lines simply can't be built in a reasonable timeframe. If only there was something that would maybe be faster and cheaper to build, maybe even something that took up less space. Guys, I just had a brilliant idea. So, we have this mechanism where a conveniently legible science fiction technology appears over and over in stories, leading to an unwarranted sense of plausibility. That feeling prompts technologists to throw resources into overcoming the final hurdle to making it a reality. And even though their efforts may be foiled by inconvenient things like maintenance, they still end up shaping the world in ways that might not make the technology more feasible, but can certainly make alternatives less so. That dynamic can get really nasty when you add the imperative to market these ideas. Philosopher and frequent thunk consultant Stefan Kellenbach has highlighted the way tech companies will casually pitch two mutually inconsistent stories about their new products to take full advantage of the science fiction plausibility pipeline. On the one hand, we're told the glorious techno utopia is right around the corner. If we can just have a little patience while the bugs are ironed out, if we stick with the program for just a bit longer, the results will be miraculous, transformative, revolutionary, more than worth all the growing pains. On the other hand, we're told that we're already living in the future. The technology is here today. Pandora's box is open, and it would be inconceivable to reverse or change course at this stage. The trick is to blur the distinction between an exciting sci-fi vision of some future version of the technology and the technology as it exists right now, with all its flaws, trade-offs, and potential for failure. The cherry-pick bits from each narrative to make a product feel both worth tolerating in the short term and unavoidable in the long term, urging their audience to surrender to its inevitability, regardless of their enthusiasm for the idea. You can see that contradiction playing out in those bizarre disconnects between hyperbolic marketing copy and the reality of the products being sold. NFTs are, were, decidedly done, but if you listen to the way their fanatical devotees talk about them, it's pretty clear we're not supposed to judge them by what they are, ugly digital art with a specious claim to artificial scarcity. We're supposed to judge them as if they were the harbingers of a totally new model of property ownership that's sure to arrive any day now. Bitcoin is slow, annoying to use, and has created all sorts of problems for its users, and the rest of us, while ultimately failing to address the issues it was created to solve. But it's still breathlessly trumpeted as the inevitable future of currency, whether or not anyone wants it to be. The advocates for these products are telling a fantastic story about what the world will look like when their tech really takes off, and repeating that story over and over to shape the world in a way that's conducive to its continued development. Sound familiar? What's telling about these sorts of sci-fi stories slash marketing copy is how constrained they are in their visions of the future. At its best, science fiction interrogates what really makes us human by proposing a world utterly transformed by technology. Where would we find meaning if our material needs were guaranteed and we could simulate anything our hearts desired?  These stories force us to reconsider seemingly fundamental pillars of our lives, and whether we'd recognize what remained if technology came along and kicked them out from underneath us. But when tech companies try to harness those exciting vibes of profound transformation of the human condition to drum up sales, they often try to sanitize them of anything truly profound or transformative, probably because legitimately transforming society would be bad for business. When Facebook met a...Macebook named its VR chat engine after the immersive simulation described in Snow Crash, it's pretty clear we weren't supposed to link that name with the book's dystopian setting, a gritty, violent hellscape run entirely by corporations, mercenaries, and crime syndicates. In the story, the metaverse is really cast as a sort of escapist fantasy for increasingly desperate people, the last vestige of comfort, structure, and security in a crumbling, embattled society. Despite its flashy advertising, Facebook's story about the future is much more pedestrian. Imagine a world where you wear a VR headset for meetings instead of staring into a webcam, and your boss also rents a virtual office space. Presumably, we're supposed to hear the name metaverse and remember the exciting cyberpunk feeling of Snow Crash while conveniently forgetting the setting and the dire warnings and all that other stuff, then project that excitement onto a sweaty headset displaying family cartoon avatars of your coworkers. It's a pretty schizophrenic pile of messaging, but it fits right in alongside the paradoxical, the future is now dance that tech companies sometimes use to sell their products. Our VR technology will be just like the metaverse, but not any of the bad bits. Or hackers, please god no hackers. All things considered, storytelling can be a powerful tool to motivate and direct human energies towards certain events. If we can picture how we want the world to be, we can organize and strategize around how to make that vision come to pass. But there are material facts about how our world works that can't be overcome by evocative imagery, no matter how many times we're treated to stories about how cool it would be if some technology did exist. For every cell phone inspired by Star Trek communicators, or submarines copied straight out of 20,000 leagues under the sea, there are dozens of perpetual motion machines, curals, and philosopher stones littering the historical record. Zombie ideas that lurch to life again and again to chew through more of humanity's collective time, effort, and other resources. Despite the best efforts of authors and futurists to call shots, or in the case of tech companies, coax miraculous ideas into being, the interface between reality and science fiction is volatile, unpredictable. Even when some new technology does manage to capture the magic of a good sci-fi story, it often arrives with complications that not even the most astute authors might have guessed. Nobody on Star Trek ever had to deal with spam collars, addictive mobile games, or intrusive surveillance on the communicators. Goddard himself is a great example of the duality of what science fiction storytelling can achieve. Deeply inspired by the descriptions of space travel in H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, he went on to play an instrumental role in developing the liquid-fueled multi-stage rockets necessary to achieve orbit. But it's worth noting that, unlike the Vaktrain, he actually built a few rockets that worked. Maybe there's a lesson in that. Shoot for the moon. But if the prototypes don't look like they're working as well as you might like, maybe aim for something a little closer instead. Does science fiction cast an oversized shadow on the direction of technological development? Are we encouraged to connect particular visions of a wondrous techno future to the buggy techno present to prevent us from exploring any techno alternatives? What sci-fi stories posit truly revolutionary ideas about the future, instead of a slightly more convenient status quo? Please, leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah, blah, subscribe, blah, share, and don't stop fucking.


Hi everybody, as Berlina is getting colder and windy, it's time to move these plants inside the house. But before we do this, we want to follow some steps in order to prevent any pest infestations or anything that you don't want to bring inside the house. So I'm going to show you what I do step by step in order to bring my plants in the house. The first thing that you want to do is to pick a date when you will bring your plants inside the house. What I typically do is I look at my calendar and I see the weather in Berlin. Once I see that the temperatures are getting to 10 degrees Celsius or lower, this is the time that we want to prevent our plants from being outside because it's too cold and also the days are going to get shorter so they will need more light maybe grow lights or anything like this and higher temperatures that you can provide inside. And around those days I'm going to pick one and say okay so that's the date when I'm going to bring my plants inside the house. Now you want to do that because you want to prepare your plants three to four days before you're gonna bring them in. First thing that you want to do is to spray them with water at high pressure. This will help you to get rid of any pest or any bugs that are on the leaves or under the leaves or on the stems and I usually do this every day for three to four days before I bring my plants in. We got a great idea last year because as you may know we live in an apartment so we don't have any garden but we do have a balcony and sometimes to water my plants or even spray them with high pressure water can be very time consuming so we actually got a hose that is 30 meters long and I just connected to the water source in the kitchen and I bring it to the balcony to spray my plants. It is pretty useful. The second thing that you want to do is to spray your plants with some insecticide. I actually make my own and this has horticultural soap, water, rubbing alcohol and neem oil and what I do is I spray the leaves on top and on the bottom. I also spray the stem and I also clean them with this solution and with paper towels. Again you want to do this every day for three to four days before you bring the plants inside. Now while doing my research I also found two options to deal with the soil and I would like to know which one do you prefer so let me know down in the comments. The first one is to spray the soil with hydrogen peroxide. This is going to be a 3% hydrogen peroxide and you spray the soil really well until you see the first layer of the soil a little bit wet. The hydrogen peroxide will make sure that you don't have any larvae or bacteria in the soil but of course you can also kill some other good bacteria in the soil. The second option which is the one that I think I'm going to be doing is to repot your plant. This way you give the plant a new soil and you make sure that there's no eggs or any larvae in the soil or around the roots. Okay after preparing your plant for the three to four days before you move it in you will move it in but in order to be really preventive what I recommend is that you quarantine your plant for at least one week so place your plant away from all of the indoor plants because we never know and I can tell you you don't want an infestation in all of your plants inside the house. So quarantine your plant for at least one to two weeks. Now very important to remember this plants have been outside the whole summer so they got lots of sunlight and we don't want to bring them to a very dark space all of the sudden so whatever I recommend is that you bring some light to them. So for example I'm going to quarantine my plants in the bathroom we don't have so much light there and what I'm going to do to provide some light to them is to put some grow lights around them so the change is not so harsh so yeah I would strongly recommend that if you want to learn more about grow lights just check out my video I think you're gonna like it and it's a very thorough guide for beginners so yeah if you want to check it out I'll leave it here I think it's over here or here but yeah I'll leave it there and yeah I hope this video was useful and as always I will see you in the next one okay ciao


Hi and welcome to this special broadcast directly from our studios at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Orlando Florida. My name is Edgar and today I have a special treat for all the women who are listening and it's a special invitation to our 2015 Women's Conference under the title Tested and True Women and the Truth of Christian Suffering. This women's conference will be hosted at Cornerstone Baptist Church the 17th and 18th of July. The woman will greatly enjoy a time of fellowship, joyful worship and music and biblical teaching. And speaking of biblical teaching allow me to present our special guest who is joining us via phone all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma Ms. Susan J. Hegg. Thanks for taking the time to join us on this broadcast Susan. Thank you Edgar it's good to be here. Well it has definitely been a blessing to have you join us these past few broadcasts Susan and I know the women who are listening have been highly encouraged by the bits of information you have provided of what is to come of our women's conference. Now Susan moving on to the last session the title reads How to Occupy Till He Comes. Let me ask you a question what are some of the points that First Peter makes in regards to how women should live in our world today? Yeah you know we live in an age where you know we have a lot of different views on eschatology I always think it's interesting we just have gone through some things in our church on eschatology and even in our reformed church we have different views you know some people are post millennia some are all millennia some are pre millennial all millennial on you go and I like to pan millennia for you myself it's all gonna pan out me and so and you know I grew up in a Baptist minister's home and my dad loved Bible prophecy that was his thing and he had a he had a television program called I Kingdom Come and he would I began his program with Mary Natha our Lord is coming and he loved to study the prophetic books Revelation and Daniel and he was always waiting for the Lord's return and so I grew up kind of with a prophetic diet and even though I wasn't saved at the time but now I'm I am looking forward to the Lord's return and you know we really do need to be occupying the time is short I don't know what you know the women listening what their eschatology is or their views are but and I don't I don't think we should make that a matter of fellowship but the Lord is coming we know the Lord is coming and Peter says the Lord is coming and seeing that he is coming we are to be holy and living righteously and so we're to occupy till he comes and so as Peter kind of winds down his epistle in first Peter four he says you know the end is coming the end is coming therefore we better be serious that's the first thing he says we better be serious we better be sober and you know we live in a world Edgar that I think one out of two now Americans on some type of psychotropic drug and so when we consider that that's very concerning in view of what Peter says we must be serious we must have our wits about us because the Lord's coming and so if our mind is dulled by drugs or alcohol or anything like that we are not going to be alert to be about what we're supposed to be doing and that is the great commission in fact Peter says that we can hasten the day of the Lord we need to be about vandalizing and so there's a lot of things that we should be doing but we need to be serious we need to be praying Peter says be watchful in our praying and I would consider there that being watchful in our praying not just praying that we'll be able to endure whatever is coming but also the opportunities to share the gospel with those that are lost and going down just in just a few hours I'm going to be having lunch with one of my siblings who's lost and I've shared the gospel with her over and over again but again I'm impressed today you know I need to share again the time is short and she needs to repair and turn her life over to the Lordship of Christ because anybody can read read the newspaper and see what's going on like you know the end is at hand I mean when you consider what's going on in our world with same-sex marriage and and now there's legislation out there with parents wanting to introduce sex to their children by having sex with them and we're heading for beyond Sodom and Gomorrah it's just vile and so we must be about the gospel so we must be serious we must be watchful we must have fervent love for one another it's not a time for Christian people to be bickering with one another about silly things in the church we need to be coming together and I'm not saying coming together at the sake of doctrine but I mean those of us and in bodies that are truly sold out to Christ we need to be loving one another serving one another and forgiving one another so we're going to be really looking at how to occupy till it comes and as I said I don't I don't know what the eschatology topology view is of women that and maybe some of them don't even know where they stand on some of these issues but and some of that is very important I don't mean to diminish that at all but the important thing is we need to be ready we need to be watchful and we must be about the Lord's business and fulfilling the Great Commission and evangelizing because the time is at hand and the time is short and I really believe that with all my heart so I hope as we end with this session how to occupy till he comes on Saturday afternoon I pray that the women will go out with with a lot of encouragement and zeal to put away the idols of their life and the frivolous things that they're about choose the things that are excellent and be about the Lord's business because the time is short so I'm excited about our last session together thank you so much Susan for sharing a little bit of the great teaching that is to come and for all the women that are out there who are listening let me encourage you to register today so you can be a part of our 2015 women's conference under the title tested and true women and the truth of Christian suffering this conference will be hosted at Cornerstone Baptist Church the 17th and 18th of July you will enjoy a great time of fellowship joyful worship and biblical teaching so take advantage and register today you can do that online at www.testedandtrue.net once again www.testedandtrue.net and if you have any questions or need help with the registration process please give us a call here at our church offices at<PHONE_NUMBER><PHONE_NUMBER> thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to seeing you at the conference God bless you


Hello, I'm Javier Hernandez reporting from Washington. Every year, more than a half a million people are released from prison. Most find themselves back on the streets without employment. But a new federal program is helping to change that. Dan Ray from WBZ TV in Boston brings us that story. This might look like just another business breakfast, but it's much more than that. Jeff Berglund might look like just another caterer at a business breakfast, but Jeff is much more than that, too. Jeff is back at work after five years in prison, given a second chance through a new program run by the U.S. Probation Office here in Boston.  Jeff works for Snapshift, the company that catered this breakfast for prospective employers of ex-offenders. Out of the 10 people that joined the program, they all became apprentices. And there's eight working full-time for Snapshift currently. And the other two are taking union jobs that are paying over $30 an hour, so we're pretty happy about the results. More than 40 employers listened as representatives of Boston, Massachusetts and the federal government explained the advantages of hiring ex-offenders. Donnie Heenan's company has employed ex-offenders in the automotive industry.  So we'll absolutely give him a chance. Does this program make a difference? Just ask Jeff. It's hard to find a job after you've been out of the workforce for so long, so I feel it's very important. This program will be hosting job fairs for potential employers and ex-offenders later this month in New Bedford and in Lynn in June. From U.S. Federal District Court, Dan Ray WBZ News. That program is part of a national initiative launched by the judiciary last year. To find out more, contact the Office of Probation and Pre-Trial Services at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Again, thanks to Dan Ray and the CBS affiliate in Boston, WBZ-TV for that report. Reporting from Washington, I'm Javier Hernandez.


Now let me tell you about one of the things I find most charming about your sight and your reviews. There's this unusual mix between extreme passion for the subject and curiosity and drive to get the books and track what's coming out and reading them and then a lot about how other people are reviewing the books.  It's one of the most valuable things. But then, on the other hand, you're very hard to impress as a reader. So just to, you give these short capsules of your reviews, here are three of your more recent ones. Oh, yeah. And I quote, passable ultralight fare, here's another one, typical Carlotto tale of justice in a flawed world. So there's something reductionist, or here's one you are very enthusiastic, quote, nicely done. Now I know those are shorter capsules for broader, more detailed reviews, but this mix between like the blasé and the enthusiasm and how willing you are to just retreat into like eh, and then that's what I find so intriguing about literary saloon. Is there anything you would say to that? Yeah, well, I hope people use the sight in that way. In a way, my reviews presuppose familiarity with the sight. I assume that people, you know, they look up a couple of reviews and they get an idea of what this person is doing. And the capsule reviews, I think, are a sort of counterbalance also to the longer reviews, in which often I will be more enthusiastic or, I mean, this ultralight novel, I gave it a B because it's perfectly competently done. But it's just a vacuous, problematic, you know, there's so little to it. But it's still, it's perfectly readable. And I hope I explained that fully in the review itself. No, you did. But one of the things which I also, I mean, the original idea behind the sight was to be able to link to other reviews. And also I have the review quotes from the major review publications, where there are review quotes available, which I actually did sort of as a countermeasure to because I was so irritated by the blurbs you find on the back of like the paperback edition, which are not at all representative of the reviews of the book. So I wanted to give an honest, I wanted to give the honest blurbs of the reviews. But it's always been important to me that, you know, my opinion is my opinion. And you really should seek out as many different ones as possible. And to be able to give access to all these different reviews to point readers to, because readers, some readers rely on a certain reviewer. And so if I can give them the link to that for this book, so that they will get an opinion which perhaps is more informative to them than mine can be, because they don't see eye to eye with me, I think that's a very important thing. And having as many different opinions as possible. To me, that always seems beneficial. I realize now we have this issue of whether the wisdom of crowds really is wisdom and whether it doesn't just overcomplicate matters as well. But it's always been important to me that I have very strongly held opinions, but please also consider the other opinions.


I've been in FC South, I'm staying in FC South with the two, but for me, I'm going to go Drake London. Tell us about it. We talk about the foul because we run the ball, we run the ball, we drive to run it back. We do this, we do that, but let me tell you, some of my watchers do work day in and day out and I think it's time to shine, you know. And him and Desmond already got a great rapport, so I'm excited to see Drake London take this next step, you know, big Drake man. We're going up top, you know how we say, man. So I'm excited to see him.  And I think Drake London is going to surprise a lot of people. I love that you said that, Grady, because you're there every day. I only spent a couple days there in camp and I could already tell the difference of how Drake walks around. Like he's no longer a rookie, he's taking control of that unit. He told me I just had an up and down okay year where he set a rookie reception in the record for the Falcons, right? And so he's a top breakout candidate. I love that. Now I feel even more convicted that you said that Grady and he might surprise some people with Desmond Ritter and that connection. You look at their numbers last year, second half or the last four games last year when Desmond Ritter was throwing the ball to Drake London, his numbers doubled from what he was doing previously on a game to game basis. And so. Well, I covered him in college and the catch radius that he has. And once Desmond figures that out like, hey, you know, if I put the ball anywhere near this guy, he's going to go up and make a catch for me, whether it's contested or not. And then you add that with Kyle Pitts, who's just this hybrid same type of receiver, but you put him inside and get matchup problems. Desmond Ritter is going to be sitting there, you know, kind of thinking his lucky stars that he's got all these weapons now and then you add Bijan Robinson to the mindset of what Arthur Smith, I really like what the Atlanta Falcons brings to the table in this division. It's going to be fun to watch and see how it plays out. What that's telling me is that you should have bumped Drake London up in your fantasy rankings, folks.


And now, here is a musical treat, the world premiere of a new mini opera called Dream Little Cockroach. There are four acts, one now, two later, and one after that. Here are our narrators. Our main character in this little opera is a cockroach. Cockroach. Well, or maybe he's a human being, I'm a little confused about that. But here's the story. Right now, he is sleeping a deep, happy sleep. But it seems that during this sleep, he has metamorphosized. He has been transformed from a cockroach into a human being.  If you listen, maybe you can hear voices too. Hark, I say! Hark! Listen carefully. Wake up! She is impending.  It's time for act two of the mini opera Dream Little Cockroach. Here are our narrators. Members, his relatives, if you will, have all heard the man's story.  The man says he metamorphosized from a cockroach into a human being. This is exciting news for the family members. All those relatives have gathered together and they are going to decide together whether day two are cockroaches, cockroaches, who became humans. And they are coming around to the idea that maybe this is not a bad thing. Okay, family members, tell us about it. I don't know, I don't know what to do. Oh, it's crazy, but maybe it's true. Why a cockroach? Ew, ew, ew. As a family, we are perplexed, so how can we figure out what will come next? Are we a cockroach? We must decide to stand with pride. Or scurry and hide. If we are cockroaches, some things are good. Yes, we have advantages not understood by simple people who've not had a badamorphosis. How sad.  Oh, they never change. They linger like lobby hopes have realized. Their basic nature never revised. They so to speak are just not sclerotized. They are soft. It's hard, it's so hard to think to protect you from hate. Learned. Until we learn, unlike the rest of you, our destiny. If there should be catastrophe, they think that we will survive. We will survive. Maybe they won't. It's time for Act 3 of the mini opera, Dream Little Cockroach. Here are our narrators. Well, the news keeps spreading. The news about the man who says he metamorphosized from a cockroach. Cockroach. Into a human, word has reached the entomologists. Entomologists are people who study bugs. These entomologists, well, these scientists, they're having a big professional meeting to discuss this strange news. Well, look at them. There's a scientist who studies bed bugs. And a scientist who studies locusts. And one who studies beetles. And one who studies mosquitoes. Oh, everybody is so excited. These entomologists are excited because they have decided that they too are originally bugs. Probably. Let's watch them mold. Oh, sorry. Let's watch them emote. I meant emote. Let's watch them emote. That's one happy bunch of scientists.  After that meeting, words spread quickly to all the other scientists. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha. La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, La Now it's time, time for the thrilling conclusion to tonight's mini opera, the world premiere of Dream Little Cockroach. Here are our narrators. Well, the news has spread far and wide too. The public has heard about the man who was a cockroach and then metamorphosized into a human. The public, the entire population, loves the idea. The public decides overwhelmingly that they themselves might be former insects. Well, probably we are all former insects. Now, we need a leader. We need a hard-headed leader. We need a leader who knows how to survive. But who should lead us? Who should be our leader? That's so obvious. La Cucaracha! La Cucaracha! La Cucaracha! La Cucaracha! Hey, a bug!  Living in the dark History so stark Cockroach! Cockroach! Yay, yay! Maybe like him I was at first Then just like him My fate reversed What's last today? Cockroach! Cockroach! Cockroach! Cockroach! He's the one for me! The opera performers The Pandemic Cockroach Orchestra Piano Yulia Yu Accordion Dr. Thomas Michelle Cello Dr. Julie Ryman Bass Dr. Bruce Copeland The narrators Karen Hopkins Christopher Hopkins The soloists Alexi Elaseev Bobby Hill Dr. Fred Tsai Ted Sharp Jan Hadland Lijo Shah And soloists and our opera director Maria Forante


I thought we'd take a walk out to the polo field and what's the practice. Don't you want to? Oh, sure. I was just wondering where we were going, is all. You haven't got anything else to do, have you? Oh, all my demerits are worked on. Okay, with my studies. In fact, I've got nothing but time on my hands. Yes, the gentleman of leisure, huh? That's right. I'm not so sure about the gentleman part. Why, Lee Phillips, how you talk? I'll have you know I'm both a gentleman and a scholar. Only I'm not so sure about the scholar part after getting that tough arithmetic problem from Mrs. Gardner this morning. Oh, you mean the one about the train that travels 60 miles an hour? Yeah. That's not a tough problem. Oh, no? I'll have an answer by the time I go to class in the morning. Oh, sure, so will I. But the question is, will it be right? I'll tell you, if you can't figure it out, I'll help you with it. Okay, then we'll both be wrong. You started all this kidding anyway. I think you said something about me not being a gentleman a while ago. That's what started. Okay. I quit. Good. Oh, see, I meant to ask you. You wrote that letter to Mr. Randall, didn't you? Sure. Last night in study hall. You saw me. I thought that's what you were doing. Uh-huh. I mailed it, too. Yeah, I sure hope he answers it right away. He sends the money. Yeah. I think you're right about that stranger. What's his name? Mr. Russell? Just like you said. Seems awfully funny for a perfect stranger to want to lend Mack the $250 to help him with his invention. Yeah, he's just a little too anxious to suit me. Mack's easy and trusts everyone. If he isn't careful, he'll lose his invention. I sure hope Mr. Randall sends you your money before Mack signs that contract with Mr. Russell. Uh, what did you say in the letter, Jerry? I explained the whole thing. Of course I didn't tell him what Mack's invention was, but I told him I thought it was very good and that. Well, I said I wanted to invest my money. No, that was a good way to put it. I told him that it was a business proposition. Well, he should like that. I hope so. But, well, Mr. Randall's mighty careful about money matters. It wouldn't surprise me if he wrote it back and said he wanted to think it over for a week or so. Oh, if he does that, it'll be too late. Yeah, I know it. Well, we'll just hope for the best. Yeah, that's all we can do. I've done my part now. The rest is up to Mr. Randall. You didn't tell him about having to get the money right away on account of the stranger, did you? No, but I told him I had to have quick action. I even told him to send the money airmail. And did you mail your letter airmail? Oh, sure. Hey, there's your friend, Jerry. Where? Who?  Oh, I see who you mean. Red Morrison. Say, he's no friend of mine. Did you know he's been reinstated as a cadet officer? No. He's a captain again. When did this happen? Oh, Ted told me about it right after lunch today. Well, what happened? Just what I figured. Major Davis called a special officers meeting, and he and Captain Gardner and Captain Rowland and all the other officers decided to reinstate Red. They figured that his saving Harold from drowning made him worthy of a cadet captain's rank. Yeah, and I suppose they canceled his demerits too, huh? I guess so. Well, that's the way it goes. I'm still peeved about it, though. Why, Lee? Well, if you'd have saved Harold like you intended to, maybe you'd have sergeant stripes now instead of Red being reinstated. Oh, I doubt that. Oh, here comes Red, Jerry. Looks like he's deliberately walking toward us. Yeah, I suppose he wants to let us know he's a captain again. That would be just like him. Hey, shall we salute him or wait until he tells us he's been reinstated? Hey, that's an idea. Let's make him tell us. I'm afraid it would please his vanity too much if we saluted him without his having to tell us about it. Hey, we're not supposed to know about it anyway, are we? Oh, no. Most likely Ted Metcalf will announce it a drill tomorrow afternoon. Here he comes now. Hey, you do the talking if there's any to be done. Shh, okay. Where's those salutes? Uh, salutes? For what? Don't these gold bars mean anything to you anymore? Gee, I didn't notice them. Say, you've been made a cadet captain again. Well, well, Red, congratulations. Never mind that. All I want from you is respect. Where's that salute? Yes, sir. That's better. Now, how about you, cadet Dugan? Yes, sir. Do you call that a salute? Try it again. Yes, sir. I still don't like it. Let me see that forearm inclined at 45 degrees, hand and wrist straight. Now, look me in the eye. That's better. Now, drop your hand with a snap. That's much better. Now, just so you won't forget it, salute me five more times. All right, I'm waiting. You think you can remember that now? Yes, sir. All right, that'll be all. You're still at attention. I am at attention. Pull those shoulders back. Chin in. You too, Phillips. Yes, sir. I dislike correcting you men, but you understand, we cadet officers have to keep you plebs in order. Oh, yes, sir. Is that sarcasm, Dugan? Oh, no, sir, not at all. All right, that'll be all. You can go now. Thank you, sir. Never mind that. Same old red. I thought being demoted might have taken some of that out of him. You know, Lee, I think I know what's a matter with him. I think his trouble is he's in love. In love? In love with himself. Oh, I get it. You think I'm right? Oh, absolutely. I've always said he thinks an awful lot of red Morrison. You know, I hope I never get to be like him if I get to be an officer. I'd rather not be an officer. Oh, I don't think you'll ever have to worry about that. I don't think anyone could come near being like him. Now, take all the rest of the cadet officers. They do their duty and dress us down when we're wrong, but they do it in a nice way. It's true. We have to learn discipline, and we have to learn it from the cadet officers. But there are two ways to give out orders, and red always uses the wrong way. Yeah, you're right. I don't mind getting called down by Ted Metcalf. He always explains why he's doing it and makes you feel glad for the correction. That's it, exactly. Oh, well, let's skip it. Yeah. Hey, look, there's Cully Newsom. Hey, and he isn't riding with the rest of the fellas. I wonder how come? Well, let's walk over there and find out. Okay. Hey, Cully. Hello there. How is it you're not up on a pony, cowboy? Oh, Sergeant Alton wants me to watch the other fellas first. It's ridiculous. I've seen hundreds of polo games and it's for riding. Well, there isn't a horse here spirit enough for me. Oh, yeah? How about the sergeant's pony? I bet you couldn't even stay up on him. Is that so? Come on, now. Cut it out. Don't start an argument. Hey, Ted Newsom. Come here now.  Yes, sir. Come here. Come on, Lee. Let's go over by the fence. Okay. What's your pony's name, Cully? Rascal. But that's not a good name for him. He's anything but a rascal. He's a pretty horse, isn't he? He sure is. Hey, listen. What? Quiet, Jerry. I thought I heard the phone ringing in the sergeant's little office there in the stable. Sure it is. I'll go answer it. Tell the sergeant, will you? No, Caley. Sergeant Alden. Save your breath. Wait till he comes over to this side. You don't seem very excited now that you've been made on the polo team. Oh, all these preliminaries seem so foolish. Well, you have to learn the game before you can expect to play it. You ready, Newsom? Yes, sir. Excuse me, sir. Your telephone was just ringing, and Cadet Phillips went to answer it. Oh, here he comes now. Captain Gardner is calling you on the telephone, sir. Oh, thank you, Phillips. Oh, here's your gun. You hold my horse while I go answer that call. Yes, sir. I'll be right back. Hey, hold it, fella. Ah, there. That's a good horse. Now I'll show you whether I can ride the sergeant's horse or not. Here, you hold Rascally. Well, you can't ride the sergeant's horse, Cully. He won't like it. I'll only take him once around the field. I'll be back before he finishes phoning. You better not, Cully. I'll just tighten up this cinch strap. The saddle's much too loose. Hey, no it isn't. That cinch is just right. That horse won't stand for it any tighter. You don't know any more about this horse than I do, Dugan. Whoa, there. That's better. Now watch me ride him, Mr. Dugan.   Hey, hang on. He'll throw you. Oh, I knew this would happen. Watch out, Cully. Hey, look at him. Cool. Wow. Did you see him jump that fence? Hey. Hey, he's running away.  We've got to stop him, Jerry. They'll both go over if he gets up on that narrow path. Here, give me those reins. I'm going out after him. Here, ask him. Let's go get him. Come on, hurry, Jerry. Hey, what's going on there? Come back here, Dugan. Hurry, Sergeant. Jerry's gone after Cully. Is that him heading for the cliff? Yes, sir. He's got my horse. He hasn't got a chance on that animal. Jerry's gaining on him, but I don't think he'll be able to head him off before he gets to the cliff. Come on, Phillips. Let's get up there. Jerry's alongside of him now. Yes. But they started up that path. He's reaching for your horse's reins. He's got them. He's jumped off his horse. What's he trying to do? He's trying to drag me to a stop, but I don't think he can do it. That horse of mine will just keep going and drag Jerry along with him until he can't hang on any longer. Come on, hurry, Phillips. I'm coming, sir. Who, why doesn't Newsom try to help? All that Cully can do to hang onto the saddle and keep from falling. He's slowing down. He's got a stop. He is stopping. Yes, sir. That boy is all right. Nerve.  I don't want him running away. Yes, sir. All right, there is all right. That's good enough. Now, come on. That poor horse is puffing like a steam engine. I should think he would be after a ride like that. Jerry's not getting up, sir. He's hurt. He looks that way. But Newsom is all right. He's getting down now. Oh, this is a shame. I'm afraid Duggan took some pretty hard bumps there. He's moving a little. Help him, Cully. Hey, don't try to get up, Duggan. I'll help you in just a second. It's night wise to move until you can see how badly he's hurt.  He's not only brave, but he's a good little horseman as well. He knew what he was doing. Let me tell you. Are you all right, Jerry? I don't know. I guess I am. Oh, my arm. Ah, take it easy now, son. Is this the arm that hurts? Yes, sir. Let me see if you can move it. There. Oh, it hurts, though. Oh, no. I shouldn't wonder. It's pretty badly bruised. How's the other arm? How are your legs? They seem to be all right. Is your horse all right, Sergeant? I'm sorry if I hurt him, but there wasn't anything else I could do. No, no, no. Never mind about him. He's all right. Well, Newsom? I'm awfully sorry, Sergeant. I should think you would be. Dugan might have been killed trying to save you from going over this cliff. You had no right trying to ride my horse. You know, I'm going to recommend a very severe penalty for this, Newsom. Yes, sir. And I'm going to see that you get a fitting reward for this rescue, Dugan. But right now, we'll have to get you over to the infirmary and put you to bed for a few days. Oh, no, I'll be all right. I don't want to go to the infirmary. That's what you'll have to do. Now it'll take a few days to heal those bruises, and he'll be lucky if the doctor doesn't find any broken bones.  Yes, sir. And Newsom? Newsom, you'll get rascal and take him back to the stable. He's tied to a tree down there. Yes, sir. Sergeant Alden. Yes, Dugan. Can I say something to Lee before he goes? Of course you can. Certainly. What is it, Jerry? Listen, Lee. Yeah? If I'm going to be put to bed, are we going to help Mac? Maybe I'll get that letter and the money from Mr. Randall tomorrow. Well, I'll tell you. I'll find out about the letter for you. And if it comes, I'll bring it right over to the primary. You just get well and leave the rest to me.


Welcome to the World Radio Communication Conference 2023, WRC 23 here in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where I'm joined in the studio today by Tanya Villatrapala, who is the Vice-Chair of Committee 6, as well as being Director-General for Spectrum Planning for the Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones for Mexico. Tanya, welcome to the studio. Thank you for having me here. Now, let me start off by asking you about the WRC, the World Radio Communication Conference. Why is this an important event for the world in your opinion? Well, this conference sets the line to follow for all the radio frequency bands and how to coordinate among the different countries, which type of services we're going to use in each of the bands. So this is very helpful also to have the equipment that we use for telecommunications in one country, also operating in another country, or when we travel, for example. So this is such a huge event and it also sets the end of the study cycle of four years. So we've been working four years to come here and now to try to agree on the issues. Now, as I mentioned before, you are newly elected, in fact, Vice-Chair of Comm 6, Committee 6. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about the work of the committee that you are Vice-Chairing. Yeah, sure. The Committee 6 of the conference deals with issues like the resolutions, some of the resolutions that we are seeing. Also, we call it country-filled notes. That means that, for example, in my country, we use a certain frequency bands for one service. So we have to have a note with some text and some conditions that we review those here. And also, one very important issue of Committee 6 is the future agenda for the future conference. In 2027, we are starting now to agree on which issues we're going to study in four years. So this committee has to agree on which issues we're going to be studying and what will be the agenda for the conference in 2027. Now, for some people, four years would seem an extremely long time to be preparing for a conference. Why is it so long, in fact? It's actually not enough in some cases because we need to do some studies. We need to try to agree among the different regions, among the different countries. And we have more than 20 topics to look at. So all the study groups in the ITUR sector are dealing with these studies, with this analysis. So it takes time, of course, and then to try to agree on a common position in four years from now. Excellent. Now, there's been a big push for a number of years now to increase the participation of women at the World Radio Communication Conference. How successful do you think that's been? I think it has been successful. There's a network of women in ITUR, actually in all the sectors in ITU. And I have also participated in the other sectors in ITU. So I see many female colleagues now and more important in leadership positions. So, for example, in my delegation in Mexico, we are more women in the technical delegation than men. So this is new. We are also the head of delegation as a woman. So this is different that I'm sure from some years ago. And what impact do you think the outcomes of this conference will have for the future of radio communications? I think it's very important what we decided here because we also opened the door for new services to operate in some frequency bands. So if we look at the digital divide, which we still have some work to do there, then this conference will allow new services, new technologies to operate in the whole frequency bands, some new services such as satellite services that can help, for example, to give telecommunications services to the rural areas. So this is very, very important. I was going to ask you, closest at home, how has the telecommunications, the radio communications landscape been evolving in Mexico? Well, normally in Mexico, it takes a little bit longer to have the new technologies. For example, now we are starting with the 5G deployment, whereas here we are already talking about 6G. So we still have some work to do, especially because we have like two realities in Mexico. One is urban areas and the big cities. Mexico City is one of the biggest cities in the world and we have all the technology there, but we also have the rural in Mexico. We have some villages where it's very difficult to give these services because we have some isolated towns in the middle of the mountains and it's really, really complicated and expensive to give the services. So we are working on it. And what will the solution be to connect to that last mile? I think it has to be a partnership between the government and the industry because sometimes we need public policy and funds to help to bridge this digital gap. Tanya Viretrapala, thank you so much for joining us in the studio. Thanks for sharing your insights with regards to the work of the committee, but as well as what's happening in Mexico. And we look forward to catching up with you again. You know, not too distant future. Thank you so much. Thank you. And if you've enjoyed this interview, which I'm sure you will have, then please check out our other interviews on our YouTube channel as well as our podcasts on SoundCloud, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And for further information, check out our website at www.itu.int. Thanks for tuning in.