Good afternoon and welcome. I'm Siobhan Brown, MSP, the convener of the Scottish Parliament's cross-party group on towns and town centres, and I'd like to welcome you to the 2022 Festival of Politics organised by the Scottish Parliament. This year we celebrate the festival's 18th year of provoking, inspiring and informing people of all ages and walks of life to engage in three days of spirited debate. We are delighted that you can join us here today and participate online for this debate on whose town is at anyway. I would encourage you all to use the question and answer box to introduce yourselves, starting with your first name only and where you are. You can also use that box to pose any questions you would like the panel to respond to. If you're keen to share your thoughts on social media, you can do so by using hashtag FOP 2022. A recent study by Power to Change shows that 20 per cent of UK high street properties are owned by distant landlords with no interest in local communities. The same study showed that 70 per cent of UK citizens are concerned about the decline of their high streets. With a sheer pace of retail change and these ever-increasingly complex ownership structures, what can local government and communities do to take back ownership? To answer those questions and more, I'm pleased to be joined today by an expert panel and let me introduce them. First of all, we have Leslie Riddock, who is an award-winning broadcaster, journalist, author, cyclist, land reform campaigner and a lover of all things Nordic, one of Scotland's best-known commentators and broadcasters. She is a weekly columnist for the Scotsman and the National and is a regular contributor for Guardian Scotland Tonight, BBC Question Time and Any Questions. We also have Phil Prentis, who is a chief officer of Scotland's town partnership, with 25 years of economic development experience across public and private sectors. He aims to drive sustainable change through collaboration and partnership and help to deliver the town centre action plan. We're also joined by Emma McKenzie. Emma is a head of asset management with New River and has a responsibility for the performance of its UK retail portfolio. A qualified chartered survey out with over 20 years' experience in the retail property market. Emma is also on the UK Government high street task force board member. Michaela Sullivan, who is the head of service and development at East Lothian Council and has experience in housebuilding and port industries and on large-scale regeneration projects. Michaela has a master's in civic design, an MBA from Manchester Business School and is a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. A very warm welcome to everybody this morning. I'm keen to bring in questions and thoughts from the audience, but I'll get us going with a couple of questions first, if I may. Town centres are critical to our culture, our economy and also our environment. Over the last decades, they have been challenged and lost the nurture that has been needed. Is ownership the key driver in reinvigorating our town centres? Whose town is it anyway or whose town should it be? What are our panellists' views as to the biggest challenges facing our town centres over the next 10 years? If I could go to Leslie first, then Phil, then Emma and finally Michaela. Over to you, Leslie. Thanks very much. I would quake a little bit at being described as any kind of expert on this front. I do now write for the Herald to everyone on the east coast and they would be miffed if they thought they were the Scotsmen, but that all being put to one side. It seems to me—and this is now slightly putting my Nordic hat back on again—that the biggest problem that still faces town councils is the fact that I've just said it, they're not town councils. That's it. We've got towns that are struggling with all the sorts of different changes that Siobhan just described, some of those ownership structures that sit beneath it, funding difficulties, trying to get going, trying to lever in the enormous amounts of energy that its people have in every town and goodwill and desire not to be walking past, dereliction all the time, depressing. It's not as if people aren't willing to try to do something to help, and yet most of those towns that we're going to talk about today have no control whatsoever over themselves directly. That's weird. If I had a pound for every time I've had to point this out to people, I'd be wealthy now, because Scotland is sitting with the largest so-called local authorities in the developed world, not by a small amount but by a country mile. Just to give you a wee example—in fact, one wee example that was highlighted in a recent Nordic Horizons event that I did is with the tiny Faroe Islands. The Faroe Islands is probably nobody's even been there, but there are 18 little islands between Shetland and Iceland. They have a population of 55,000 pagora. We probably have got towns all over Scotland that are bigger. They have 55,000 people and they have 30 local councils. We have 32 for 5.3 million people. The recent event that we did had the mayor of Vaggar on. It's a town of 1,000 people. There we are. Would we even call that a town? It has about 20 per cent of income tax that is sent straight to that local council. They don't argue, they don't have to beg the larger municipality or the Government of the Faroes every year on a different basis. No. As of right, the same thing in Norway, the money goes straight off to those municipalities and the control that they have allowed them to build an international swimming pool of 1,000 people because they happened to be lucky enough to have in their midst a brilliant young man who became an olympic swimming champion. Building on his reputation and his home base, they self-built practically a swimming pool. The land was donated to them to the municipal council. They put sweat labour into it. The ladies of the parish were ending up painting the yellow lines on the bottom of the pool before it was filled. On the basis of that, they have now adapted their entire outlook of their town to being about an experienced culture, a memories culture. They are building brilliant memories of being a young person and a child in vaguer because that is what will get their young people back after they have gone on to further education somewhere else. They can do that because they control their town. Living on an island that only has about four or five thousand people on it, it would not even make a fraction of a corner of an area committee in the massive desert that is local democracy in Scotland. That is what we are missing. Everything that flows after this is trying to deal with this massive, unspoken about difficulty, which is the structure of our local government. I agree with a lot of what Leslie has said in terms of the democratic deficit. We tend to have much bigger local authorities that are quite distant, and very often they will focus in on one particular town to the detriment of a lot of others. Going back to the starting precept, Scotland is a nation of towns. We are still a relatively small nation, but towns are really significant in terms of our history, our culture, just wider society, the environment, the economy. We have to look at where we are just now and how we actually move forward. The question is who owns or whose town is it anyway. Some of that will be about ownership, but fundamentally it should be does the town work for the people in that town and what are the mechanisms to make that happen, make the town more relevant. Covid and climate have both provoked a step change in terms of what needs to happen. I think the only way forward will be genuine collaboration where the public sector becomes a facilitator and the commercial and social sectors work together to generate ideas. I am a big fan of community ownership, but I urge caution that the current economic construct actually works against communities. Where we have seen communities step up to the plate to take on projects such as the cinema project in Campbelltown or in Helensburg or across the country. Work, development, trust and others have stepped up to the plate. Mid staple quarter in the Stove down in Dumfries have faced massive challenges because the system is rigged against them. The work that was undertaken by Professor Lee Sparks in the town centre, the new feature for Scotland's towns, a lot of those fiscal measures need to be addressed, and the system measures need to be addressed, whether it is better recognition in the planning system and the planning hierarchy, the economic strategies and the climate strategies, but fundamentally even the taxation and the fiscal barriers to make it easier for communities to have ownership and control. At the end of the day, those towns belong to the people in the towns, they do not belong to the extractive economy or the absentee landlords. That is the sense of frustration that people feel too distant from it. They feel powerless, they feel disimparred in terms of being able to make change, but there has been some progress and I think that we need to take the learning from where we have seen progress and actually take that back to government to start removing the barriers and start to encourage much more of that happening. I am looking at this from an optimistic viewpoint. We are going to have to repopulate our towns more densely. That should be looking at social and affordable and net zero housing, which in turn just brings populations back into the heart of the town, because perversely Scotland, as a nation of towns, hollowed out of its town centres over the past 50 or 60 years. We put everything to the edge of town, we then allowed developers to come in and basically tell us what we were getting, and most of Scotland's nature towns are basically clone towns. You get the same thing. Now that clone model does not work and the shopping centres are not working because of online, so we have to rethink, but we should be rethinking this in a really optimistic and positive way. Think about more affordable housing in the town centre and denser populations around 20 minute neighbourhoods and sustainability. Think about our towns becoming eco towns with solar farms on the rooftops, green walls, pop-up parks, biodiversity. Think about a raging demographic in megatowns that is much more accessible and more attractive for people. Move beyond retail, there is a future beyond retail that brings in mixed use approaches and mixed places much more interesting. Moving forward, the key is collaboration. I agree with Leslie that there is a distance between the sort of democracy and the leadership, but that could be fixed reasonably quickly with getting the likes of development trusts and community councils working together at a sort of hyper-local level, but fundamentally being facilitated by local government and obviously central government as well. The bottom line is, and I will finish in this point, our town centres are critical in terms of economic, social and environmental infrastructure. They tell the story of Scotland as a nation, they hold our heritage and our culture, so we must do more and we must find ways to actually make them better. Thanks very much, Phil. If I could move on to Emma, whose town should it be and what are the biggest challenges facing our town centres for the next 10 years? Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for having me on the panel, Siobhan. Whose town is it? Well, it's everybody's town. It's the people who live there first and foremost. It's their town, and as an owner of assets, new river road, 28 shopping centres in towns up and down the whole country. From our perspective, we invest in towns, and we have to be part of that community. We have to engage with the community, we want to engage with the community, because without our asset, for that asset to be successful, the town has to be successful. The ownership of towns, and I take your point, there's 20 per cent of property in town centres that there's absentee landlords, but that, therefore, 80 per cent is known. We know who 80 per cent is the vast majority of a town centre, we know who owns those assets, and that's in itself as an opportunity. For those who are engaged and want to engage, that's what you have to focus on, is who is there to do something and to make a difference, because there are enormous factors that affect a town centre, which nobody can control in a small environment, and that's all the economic factors, that's all the technology changes that we're all seeing and experiencing, that's all the demographic changes that are happening, and all the infrastructure of our towns and cities and how places are put together. That's before we mentioned funding, and that's not only public funding, but private funding and banks and institutions putting money into town centres. All those factors are significant before you look at a town centre. From New River's perspective, we are an investor in retail assets, retail and leisure assets, and historically, town centres have been very much focused on being based on retail, and that's been the principal purpose for people to come into town centres. What Covid has done has very much accelerated a lot of what was happening anyway, so that oversupply issue of retail and town centres has only accelerated, and that in itself is an opportunity, and that's the opportunity for us all to work more collaboratively, and that's both the public and the private sector, because both have a huge part to play, and working with first and foremost the community and the people that live there to understand what are the drivers of the need of the people that actually live there, and we certainly, before doing anything that requires a planning consent, obviously we have public consultations, we do constant surveys with our customers to understand what the requirements are, but I think one of the biggest challenges is actually making things happen, because I think there's been so many panels and discussions and commentary and press and publications about what a town centre needs and how it needs to adapt and change, and I think there's a recognition that has to be much more mixed use and there has to be much more facilities for living, shopping, enjoying one another's company, engaging and leisure, and all those elements are going to make a town centre successful, but it's actually taking some action that's needed far more than talking about it, and I think that's where we all have to collaborate, work together, and come from the bottom up and actually speak to the people that live in these towns who want to engage and how we actively share the expertise, because there's phenomenal expertise in the towns that we operate in, and not only from the councils, but from retailers and community groups, etc, and really try and harness that will, because what's fallen out from the pandemic is that many people have reacquainted themselves with their town centres, and that's a wonderful thing, it's a positive thing. They've also taken on the fact that there's a responsibility to your local town and for a town to be successful, you have to use it and engage in it and be interested in it, and that's that appreciation of all people in a town and the businesses that operate there and to support those businesses has all risen up, so there's an opportunity just now to grab all of that and make change happen, but that takes collaboration, and I trust that that's the other element that people have to trust one another, and the public sector and the private sector have to trust one another to really make things change in a town, and certainly from our perspective, ownership is responsibility, because ownership isn't just a privilege to be able to own assets in any town, but it comes with that, it's obviously responsibility and accountability, you're accountable to the people in that town, if you've chosen to buy something in that town, you're accountable to them, and certainly at New River we feel very accountable to the people in our town to ensure that we're providing what they need and want, and that's what we have to listen and understand and hopefully deliver on some of that. Thanks Emma, yes totally agree, can I move on to Michaela please? Good afternoon and thank you for having me on the panel Siobhan. I find this whole area quite interesting, I work in East Lothian, and I'd like to put in a plea for us not to consider all towns to be complete basket cases. We have some very successful small towns in East Lothian, and Financial Times did a study during Covid across the whole of the UK looking at where people shopped most locally, and East Lothian came out at the top of that table across the whole of the UK, and that study was then repeated sometime after all the sort of lockdowns and so on ended, and East Lothian still came right up in, I think we were in the top five still, for people shopping locally in our area. Now it's not perfect, nothing's perfect and we still have our problems, but I think our towns are providing to a fairly large degree quite a lot of what people are looking for, and as a consequence of that people are continuing to use them, and I think it was Phil that made the point that quite a lot of places in Scotland have hollowed out their towns, and they've become almost exclusively areas for retailing, and retailing is something that takes place during the day, and people are starting also to sort of shop more online and so on, and that has left this deficit in towns, and I think it's very important, I'm a town planner by profession, and so town planners have thoughts on this, but I think we're going to have to actually try and move it forward in terms of policy and consider what towns are actually for, because I think a successful town going forward is not just going to be a retail area, if it is, that's not really what people are looking for, people are looking for towns to provide much more, and I think that our towns need a complexity of urban grain of the type that perhaps the more successful small towns that have continued to flourish have, and that is a town providing places to go and eat and drink, places for recreation, places to live, and so on. So, I think successful towns in the future are going to have much more of a complex urban grain and be mixed uses of residential and retailing and entertainment and restaurants, bars, cafes, all of those things. Now, how to actually achieve that is a much more difficult thing, and certainly from our experience in East Lothian, not all the buildings are owned by people who have any connection with East Lothian, or who have even East Lothian at its best interests in their ownership, and I don't have all the answers as to how we deal with that, but we do have, I think, to reimagine our towns, starting with the sort of planning policy and vision and so on and so forth, not continuing to have Class 1 retail frontages for great swathes of our town centres and denying the potential of other users, but reimagining and bringing those things forward. So, I'll stop at that point, as I no doubt the debate will evolve. Thanks very much, Michaela. I think that you're totally right that with town centres are not going to be the retail hubs that they were 30 years ago, and we didn't have any purpose in different uses such as leisure. If I could just move on to one question, I will come to the audience shortly. In Scotland, many high street buildings are owned by the public sector. What more can be done to encourage those bodies to divest or to repurpose, e.g. town centre first, financial incentives, housing, economic or climate strategies, if I could start with you, Phil? I suppose that if we go back to 2013, when Malcolm Fraser was undertaking the independent review into town centres, Malcolm visited roughly 100 towns across the country, big, small, urban, rural, island. It was fascinating because Malcolm was driven by social justice, and he worked out that 40 per cent of the built form was lying fallow. At that point in time, we had about 35,000 people who were homeless, and Malcolm just said, look, even if we just started to join up the spaces above shops, the public sector ownership, I'm not talking about just local authorities, but if you added up what the health boards had, what police and fire had, and they all tended to be decanting and moving out to a shiny big hospital in a field in the middle of nowhere, which depended on people having a car to get to. He said, why don't we actually just bring this all back into the centre again for sustainability, for community? There is a massive amount of public ownership across Scotland, disproportionate to the rest of the UK. If you look at the agencies and the likes of DWP and all the public sector, you will find that they've got a large footprint. They must start working together at that level of honesty, what is going to be disinvested, can we work more collaboratively in terms of hubs that service the public more widely? Fundamentally, they need to come up with political prerogative, they need to come up with a plan, they need to engage the community with that plan, they need to engage investors with the plan and then they need to start to deliver it. I think there's an anxiety about where do we start. The starting point is that conversation about what do our citizens need and what would make our town more vibrant and accessible, and the public estate can play a big role in that, whether that is selling it on to commercial investment or house builders for social housing or whatever, that will all form part of the plan, but I think local authorities and the public sector have got a massive stake to play because they own so much of our town centres. A really, really large chunk of our town centres is actually within the public ownership, and with the move to try and work more smartly post Covid, probably more agilely, a lot of that stock is actually going to be surplus to requirements, so it gives another big opportunity in terms of how that could be used as an economic stimulus for the town. Let's start off with the conversation, get some political leadership and prioritisation, engage the community throughout, talk to the commercial investors as well, deliver the plan. It's taken us 60 years to wreck some of our towns. It'll take a good 20 years to fix them, but we have to just move forward positively, and I think there's a big, big role for local authorities and the wider public sector to play in that. I'm sort of completely shocked to hear how much I must have somehow missed that key finding from Malcolm's excellent report, but that idea that 40 per cent of the built form is sitting fallow and presumably owned by the public sector in our towns in Scotland is really quite shocking. I mean, there are problems with all sorts of other forms of ownership there as well, but it's almost kind of who knew. I mean, it probably did take Malcolm some time to actually work his way through. This is common to every attempt to try to map who owns bits of Scotland. Of course, more attention has been paid to the rural landscape and the large ownership by large sporting estates, but this question of who owns the town centres and what's sitting there is pretty key. I mean, I would love to think that there was some way to get some civic energy, to channel some energy into that and effectively have a citizens assembly in every town to just hear what there is available and try to move in some way on the place plans that are meant to be happening, but I'm not sure if they're able to tackle this level of stuff sitting kind of in a bent. I was going to mention having just heard, I think, from Mikayla about East Lothian. I was a couple of years ago at the very excellent place in Dunbarh, which is a reuse hub, and that actually arose from the onerous leases, which is another cute thing that goes on. I had not heard about this until I spoke to them, but the zero waste hub in Dunbarh exists because it's in what was an old supermarket that was bought by a rival, closed down deliberately so as to not create competition for their supermarket and was sitting there unusable. There was no bid that was ever going to be successful if it was going to be on the supermarket, but when a social enterprise walked in, that would do okay, because that wasn't going to in any way harm their business. If that's what we're down to in the way that we can try to map and plan our way through towns, it is a really difficult situation. Just the final little thought is that a lot of people will think that solutions, and maybe it was Phil was touching on the difficulties that are facing communities going in and buying stuff. The main difficulty is—I was noticing that in one of the chats that's coming up. It was John Murray who was pointing out that all those community enterprises are volunteers. They're actually pouring their lives into doing stuff. They're also ending up having to make annual applications for grants to take on an asset that's going to be there forever. I'm sorry to be like Mrs Gloom personified here, but we have not got a match between what we've got in terms of reddies sitting in town centres, existing buildings and spaces, and the availability of that land to do things with actively. I would love to think that people power might be something that could begin to unleash it all. If I could just bring in Micaela on this point on how do we encourage those bodies to divest or repurpose from a local authority point of view? We have a project running at the moment where we have some town centre buildings, some of which have fallen into disrepair and are not in active use, because the previous uses have been moved to newer premises. We have a project at the moment looking at replacing quite a large part of what's actually one of our town centres bearing in mind that our town centres are quite small. We're not the city of Edinburgh here, but we're looking to do exactly what everybody's saying and to repurpose those buildings for affordable housing, some additional retail, pocket park and so on and so forth. I noticed somebody put in the chat that local authorities need some commercially minded folk. Having come from the house building industry, I'd like to put a claim in for being a commercially minded person. I don't think that I am alone. I think in many local authorities there are commercially minded folk and these projects are starting to happen as we look at what our town centres are going to be in the future. I think Phil's rightly said it's taken a long time for our town centres to perhaps decline in some places to the point where it becomes urgent that something needs to be done. Therefore, it will take time. With all these things, with any property development, you have to go through the consenting processes, you have to consult people, you have to build a consensus and you have to come up with something where the rent you'll achieve when you've finished pays the debt that you borrowed in order to be able to build it in the first place. That commercial reality doesn't really go away. It's true for local authorities wanting to develop as well as everybody else. I think these things are starting to happen. Maybe they could happen quicker or better. Perhaps having these debates is important in highlighting those sorts of things. I think it's a little bit for watch this space that there are challenges that may be overcome. There's also quite an important issue, and a couple of people have touched on it, around the upper floors. Retail in the past has been reasonably lucrative as a rental proposition. The upper floors of buildings have often just been used for storage or indeed not at all. I quite recently went into the upper floors upper ladder of a very complex building in Dunbar, which has been mentioned, where the ground floor had been turned into a shop what must be many, many decades ago and nobody had entered. They blocked off the route to the upper floors and nobody had entered the upper floors in literally decades. It's quite fascinating because this is not a council project. It's the ridge, which is a sort of employment trust that trains people in traditional construction skills and so on. The ridge is now looking to redevelop that building and use the upper floors. There are examples like that and things that we can do to change our town centres. It's not always going to be easy, and that's, as I mentioned earlier and I think other people have touched on, the fact that there are absent landlords who have bought property for completely different reasons from those who live in the town centre would like them to own it for. Thanks very much, Michaela. I am conscious of time and I did want to bring in some questions from the audience. I'll go to you Emma first, but the question is from Flowcans in Portobello. Here in Portobello we have a disproportionate number of fast food restaurants on the high street. Talking with the local planner, there is no mechanism for the citizen to influence the make-up of the high street. Can I please know your thoughts on that? I agree. It's a perennial problem, isn't it? It's getting the tenant mixed right, particularly when the ownership is disparate. Certainly, as an owner of shopping centres, we are far greater. Oversight and control are obviously who we let shops to when we try to get the balance right. High streets don't have that oversight and privilege that an owner of a whole asset has, but from the public's perspective, I guess it's engaging with any planning applications that are in. There is an opportunity to object to any planning applications and it's just being mindful of that and keeping an eye on a planning portal. Not everybody's notified, there's still neighbourhood notification that goes in if there's a planning application, but that's one of the routes is to go looking for it, to go and engage. Again, usually there's notices on lamp posts, etc. If there is a planning consent in the process of being considered. Again, it's from a council's perspective who are granting those planning consents that they also have the control as to what happens in that town centre, and that goes back again to really understanding the needs of the community and the wants of the community and the opportunity to engage with both the public and the private sector, and first and foremost, the people that live there to influence what actually happens. Thanks Emma. Phil, do you want to come in on this question? Yeah briefly, I'll just to back up what Emma has said. I mean, where you've got really highly functioning sort of collaboration around town teams, beds, councils working closely together, really applications should be notified, so the team should be made aware of what's coming, and we have to just consider wider societal issues around health and wellbeing. We don't want proliferation of things that could potentially be harmful, but we also want to get them mixed right for the place. So, again, get your plan in place, stick to it, and try to manage that in a longer term, but the planning process should be able to allow people to influence that in terms of objecting our raising concerns through groups, etc. Thanks very much, Phil. I'll move to the next question. Leslie, Graham from New Helensborough. What do the panel think about the Scottish Government's sponsoring, say, 10 big ticket events each year for which towns could bid for to stage? The intention would be that there would be a legacy from this event. As an example, I'm thinking of the one really big annual ticket, which would be the annual housing expo, similar to the highly successful Finnish expo. It attracts over 100,000 visitors in the month of August. Is that for me, Siobhan? Yes. I'm actually just about to go over to Finland to see one of their expos this year. They move it around a town every year. They've been doing it for decades. They have a bit of built new ideas about house building. It lets everyone come and see stuff, not just in theory but in actual practice. It leaves a legacy then of new homes for each new town that moves around. It's brilliant, utterly brilliant. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, but I will move on, I merely note that in terms of the number of councils that exist in Finland, there are 309. Scotland is 30. One of the reasons that this works in Finland is because you have a town council to engage with. You have somebody who's really going to take it on and run with it. That is one of the reasons that all those places find it easier to skip around and do stuff like that without getting bogged down. As Phil said, you've got massive councils. If there's going to be a fair that's coming to your council, you end up wasting time with every town in the council arguing about their gig. That's one of the issues of what will stop that kind of thing happening. I just briefly wanted to comment a wee bit on the previous thing about the question of people having uses of high streets and crucial bits of land in their towns that are being used for things that they regard as already over-served. Someone who's in this meeting but hasn't put in a question yet got in touch with me before this event and talked about a problem that they've got in Banff, where they've got an area, Canal Park. It's home to quite a lot of football teams, including the famous Devron Vale County FC, which my dad used to sport. That's being estimated. That contributes £1.75 million annually to the local economy. Local area—it's not even a council, obviously. It's in the massive Aberdeenshire council, but the Banff and Buchan area has decided to, despite the fact that locals are two-to-one against it, to sell the land to morrisons. Morrisons, in the meantime, has been taken over by what looks like, in the words of The Guardian, a company that focuses on debt, gymnastics and property deals. That is still in the process of going through. It's going to obliterate a bit of green space. There are 770 kids that use that football pitch. You could go on and on and on about how much that is useful. Meanwhile, McDuff, the neighbouring town, has just given planning permission for Aldi to set up a store. Nobody thinks that this is a good idea and nobody can stop this. It's actually being built on common good land. Historically, this is land that ought to belong to the people. Yet councils have just decided that that's them these days. They're about to go to the court session. At some date, they will not tell local people so that they can't actually find out what's happening. They can put in their objections and they can't afford a lawyer to go and argue on their behalf at the court event. However, I would guess that this will be nodded through and people will say that the council needs the money and what else can you do with it? I would also guess that this is happening all over Scotland. It's not good enough, and yet all the tools are stacked against. Those folk have done all the right things in terms of notification, putting in their submissions, putting in their arguments, getting, even getting the costing of if it comes down to money, how much that football team and all the different stuff is contributing and it means zip. Thanks, Leslie. I'm going to move on to the next question and I think I'll give it to you, Michaela. It's from Ronnie in Dumfries. Why do so many businesses move out of towns and what can be done to reverse the trend? Quite a number of retailers, I think, have sort of moved to the outskirts because people are notwithstanding some of the comments that have been made here. I think people are looking for choice in terms of where they shop and they are looking quite often to the larger retailers, particularly in the current climate, where people are looking for cheaper food when households are challenged and energy prices are rising and so on and so forth. There are issues around the way people want to shop and the type of shopping that people are actually looking for and how that plays out in a balance with what can then fill what were the shopping areas in the town centres. I don't think we can almost halt a particular tide if people are voting with their feet. If nobody went to out-of-town retailers, people would have stopped building them. I don't think we should try and stop necessarily retailers who sell the basic goods from moving to the outskirts of towns where it's perhaps more accessible, but what we then need to do is to reimagine what was left behind and make sure that what we actually put in place is somewhere that is desirable that people want to go. That comes down to a combination of things, policy, imagination and how we engage landlords. I don't have all the answers to that, I don't profess to have all the answers to that and perhaps also getting people more engaged in terms of the planning of their town centres. It does surprise me, people put in objections to planning applications, so people are motivated and interested in planning at the point where they can put in an objection to a planning application. Very few people actually engage with the plan and applications have to be determined in accordance with the plan, that's what the law says. I think where there's a deficit at the moment is allowing people to see the point, if you like, of planning and to come forward at the time when decisions are being made about places. There's a new provision in the 2019 Planning Act that allows communities to prepare their own local place plans and for those to then feed into the wider planning system, and I'm very much hoping that people will engage with that in our area and let us know what they do want. There's a lot of complexity about this, about who owns what and what can be brought forward. In the area that I live personally, there are quite a number of coffee shops, and when an application went in for a new coffee shop, the local Facebook page was full of armchair commentators telling us that we don't need another coffee shop, but at the end of the day, that's somebody's idea, that's somebody's capital, that's somebody's investment, that's somebody's business, somebody's livelihood, and said coffee shop appears to have quite a large number of customers. It's very easy for people to sit on the side and say, this is what we don't want, but actually when people do bring businesses forward in town centres, if they are frequented by the local population, then it suggests that it is filling a need and is providing what somebody wants. There are no right answers here. What I do think is that we have to be imaginative, we have to look at our town centres and say, what can this be in order that people will use it on a 24-7 basis? That is more than just retailing, it's about all the other things that I think make up a successful urban place. You can look at successful urban villages that form parts of towns. You look at somewhere like Stockbridge, there's no problem, there are probably a few voids, but there's no problem in those places. There are people living there, there are restaurants, there are cafes, there are bars, there are Sainsbury's local or whatever, those sort of smaller retail outlets. You can create these successful places and some of those, I would say, a similar vibe exists in some of our smaller town centres in East Lothian that people are proud of and feel are successful. That's the challenge for us all to think about what we want our town centres to be in the future, how, through policy, we can drive that and how, through other means, some of those are really quite complicated and whether you get into government-backed schemes to buy out owners who are absent and are not interested. Those things are always really complex, but there are some challenges there, really big challenges. The last question that we have is from Scott. I live and I work in the Loch Lomond and Trossick's National Park. A significant number of our villages and towns have what, on the surface, would seem to be vibrant, dynamic and well-occupied centres, but that is largely focused on tourism and needs lots of tourists. That means that many locals still have to travel to larger urban centres for everyday needs. What are the panel's thoughts on the role of tourism in town centres? Given that I'm sitting in Oban, which has just doubled its population since the start of the season, it's pretty relevant. I can understand what Loch Lomond and Trossick's is going to be very much dominated by visitors and a lot of how the centres are shaped up will be to serve as a visitor. I think that there's important learning in that large, for example, typical seaside town. There was a real agitation from the population that they were actually losing control and, again, the ownership piece came in. Why are we giving our town away to people coming down from Glasgow the weekend to get drunk or to have fish and chips or to go to Nardini's? In reality, a lot of the town isn't working for us as a fairly wealthy ageing demographic. I think that there just has to be a conversation about a decent balance. A lot more people are working gradually and they will demand a change in what's on their doorstep in terms of being able to provide for their everyday needs. That's an opportunity. The season in Scotland is predominantly quite short and it's going to be spring through to autumn, and then these villages tend to get cold and empty during the winter, so someone with a bit of imagination can look at how to extend the shoulder, but make sure that there's just decent provision for the core residents, the people who live in these towns, not just the people who come and visit them. Maybe going back to the question from the chap from Helensburg about the big expo events, I'm with Leslie. I think there's some really good innovations that could happen with that, but I would beg the question. You go to Helensburg, it's a beautiful town. You've got a sort of reinvestment of Cahoon Square. There's lots of markets and local produce that are produced and are showcased and sold in those areas. Why don't you put on more local things to celebrate your own local culture, get your various community groups to organise and to get people into the town? Helensburg's community cinema has 16,000 members. Those people come in towards the cinema, give them things to do when they're in the town. Tech ownership, don't wait for the big man to come and fix it because he's not coming. Do it yourself. In the open, the guys in the office next to me are planning open live. There will be 10,000 people visiting them. They've already done the Sea Shanty festival. They're in the middle of thinking about the Highland Games at the weekend. Every single week there's something happening, driven, designed and delivered by the local community. I do think that we can enliven our town centres with markets and festivals and events, concerts and performance, but that should be just local people taking the ownership and doing it themselves. Once in a while, the big actual thing comes and lands, but by and large you can drive a lot of energy and happiness and fun by just getting off your backside and doing it yourself. Thank you, Phil. We've got probably about 10 minutes left and I'd like to thank everyone for all those contributions. We are not going to get to every question that is in the chat, unfortunately. Before we close, I'd like to give each of our panellists one minute to sum up. I think that what we might do is if we could take it from Mike, who has put the question is, what is the first concrete step to get towards where we want to be? Can we start with Lesley, please? I'm trying to get to a stage where we have towns that run themselves again. I think that's what we've got to do, because everything else here is still fighting the fact that control ownership and everything else is sitting out with the town. You're always on the back foot when you get to that situation. Of course, every time you suggest a meantime solution, you end up, because Scotland has a great proclivity—I'm sorry to have on—but this Government also does for the kind of just managing to keep purple in long-type solutions that don't fix many of those problems. However, trying to get people together into well-publicised citizens assemblies, I hear that there are place plans and all sorts of inputs, but you'd really need to win back the trust of people, because as any number of community councils that have done this kind of work have been ignored. People who have had little campaigns over areas that I mentioned in BAMP, for example, have gone forward and been ignored. Every time they're ignored, you've lost the trust of those people and they won't get involved in the next well-meaning sounding thing that sounds like just another way to tick a box. Thanks, Lesley. Emma, can I bring you in, please? I think that the most important thing is the collaboration piece between all the parties at every level. Lesley said that local community at the starting point of that and actually listening to what people want and need. However, the other big influence is obviously funding. Whether that's Government funding or private funding, there has to be a commercial angle to make things happen. For the public sector or the private sector to invest needs funding and it needs to be commercially sensible. That whole piece is very much part of actually affecting any positive change and also to be able to educate one another and learn from one another. I think that that goes back to the collaboration of sitting and understanding what are the drivers of all the parties in that equation to make something happen. Certainly, we're happy to be open because we need to be with numbers on anything to be able to show this is what we can do, this is how we'll invest and this is how we can continue to deliver to our shareholders and likewise from the council understanding what drives them and then the people what they actually want because without understanding what anybody wants no change will be meaningful and have sustainability because for it to have a long term success it has to actually be ticking a box and delivering what people want that lives there. Thanks Emma. I totally agree with the collaboration being an ex-counselor. I was continually frustrated that politics got in the way of a lot of progress in that sense. I move on to Mikayla. Thank you. I think, as Emma has said, a collaboration between a wide number of actors who have an influence on these things is very important and I think also just starting to form a vision of what town centres are going to be in the future and to stop perhaps sometimes clinging to the past and look to see what do we want to achieve, what do people want here and then from that there's the complexity around land ownership and investment and so on and so forth and how you get to the point where people find in their town centre what they want to find there and those challenges are not they're not easy they don't have a simple answer but unless we start and unless we try things aren't going to change and we're just going to end up with boarded up shops with Tullet signs. Thanks Mikayla and Phil can I finish with you please? Phil can you hear me? I don't think we've got Phil. I think we've lost Phil unless he can come back. I don't think he can hear. I'm going to give him a wave but no okay so we must end there. I'd like to thank everyone for coming along today and making such a big contribution. I'd also like to thank our panel Betheliridog, Phil Prentis, Emma Mackenzie and Mikayla Sullivan for leading such an insightful discussion. Let me also thank my colleagues in the cross-party group on towns and town centres for bringing this event together and also for the Parliament staff for running it behind the scenes and can I take this opportunity to remind you that there are two more online events taking place as part of this festival which is disability and the future of work which starts at 3 pm today and the climate crisis hasn't gone away which runs between 12 and 1 pm tomorrow. There are also events in the Scottish Parliament building if you are able to join us in person and for full information and to book your ticket please visit www.festivalofpolitics.spot. That again concludes our event today and thank you very much. I'm just going to see. Phil, can you hear me? You're muted. I'm good. Technical problems, Phil. Okay. All right. Thank you very much everybody.


Hello, what's pop? We are on twitch. We are not we are live I'm tweaking But by the time you see this you won't be so just leave a like comment subscribe turning up post notification bells Let's continue to grow a family from Chicago to the UK. You see what's behind me spotify playlist So we don't music reactions And we start off with gets on a daily Dupi Grm daily, okay. I like this green screen or whatever this is. It's like a soccer picture field. However, you said football field Gets first row. Who row? That's how ignorant. Let's get into Just had a health check and a match fit halfway line should have seen our slap tip tierry on retactics Sierra on me Martin I'm a gang do mileage who had you hold on wait wait no cuz he's he's doing a lot. Let me hold on. I got a focus Rewind Just had a health check and a match fit halfway line should have seen our slap tip tierry on retactics Sierra on me Martin if I give a see my new night I'm a gang do mileage who had you silent. It's a miracle Heidi forget my man get his liver pulled out of his chest Talk about me talk about it. Wait a minute, bro. So if I ever see man United Did he say I make the gun do mileage? Is that what he said? Retactics Sierra on me Martin if I ever see my new night. I make gang do mileage who Had you silent. It's a miracle Heidi forget my man get his liver pulled out of his chest. I Just moved recently. I got a brand new castle that came with a ring doorbell and an arm and some brand new Oh my god, is he doing premier? This is premier league bars Don't wanna see man for I'm still gonna ball. I said I got mills in a wall Dude in Madrid to real They think they seen it all watch when I showed in the next real go play your position too many cooks in the kitchen This is the chef's field G got money, but G just do what G can afford somewhere got wrapped in nothing them for his food because he weren't feeding the rules You know what's crazy, bro Gets is such a talent and such a business man at the same time. He doesn't do anything. I feel without purpose He moves purposely so he's on GRM daily with a purpose. He brought a purposeful sleep like like freestyle Okay, he's using all these I think if this is all premier league. I can't really I'm not really too like seasoned on it but like This could potentially be used in so many commercials and so many like you know I'm saying there's just opportunity for this to be played so many other things In spiritual there's this morning for it's all because he won't feed in the rules Valley in spiritual There's this tinkle balance don't throw stones if you live in a glass house or live in a crystal Please don't tell me about no old works.  I just got some advice on my brethren in not that Ian, but Ian's right Table Annabelle's girls like dining driving and fooling painting doing our passenger princess Chelsea smiling Ambidextrous by a driver my left hand Picks behind me from Tottenham to Western Then what bombs can't speak on riches insecure youths with leads on bitches awesome.  That's Elon's wishes numbers don't lie That's a lie. You can't lean on digits Yeah, what's in the tie? Tell me the season of vicious. I numbers don't lie. That's a lie You can't lean on digits Right in an electric ride, that's Elon's wishes numbers don't lie. That's a lie You can't lean on digits writing Pierre watching the tie. Tell me the season of vicious I I get captain one eyes for what he's got visioned I was in Bournemouth white West slaughtered offside when I got cornered one with dreadlocks one with the fade One with the mohawk one with the ballad you see by the time what happened that trended I was in Brentford doing up Kim Jisoo. That's defensive. I should have stayed in Aston's Villa, but that's in the trenches everything's stolen around there. This is Lootingtown.  I've been around since 1886, when nearly 107 This is pretty elite, I'm gonna add it to my playlist I like it, I like it, man It's different, it's all he named a lot of premier league teams He put bars behind it, not just named them like Just to name them and put some filler in there No, it's actually bars Skella 1-10, 1-10, start rapper 10 being the best thing I've heard 5 being average, it's about a 9 I ain't even gonna hold you, man See y'all later, like, comment, subscribe, turn on your post, thumb up


Next up, Trey Turner, Los Angeles Dodgers, middle infielder, heading into his first season with the Dodgers, first full season with the Dodgers after being acquired from the Washington Nationals in the middle of last year. Somebody who has shortstop and second base eligibility, so that's important. We're talking about somebody who had a 328 batting average last year, highest in the majors. 338 and 58 games with the Dodgers also led the majors with 195 base hits led the National League with 32 stolen bases and 319 total bases. 28 homeruns, 77 RBIs, 34 doubles, all around one of the best hitters, one of the most reliable hitters in all of baseball and it's going to be in the middle of a stacked lineup with the Dodgers again this year so that should benefit him as well as you saw his average did go up when he switched locations so expect another big season out of Trey Turner


It's so nice to hear from Judy and to reflect that I was about 10 when the association formed. And that's why it's such a privilege to look out and see some of those like John Hatcher, who will be our Belluzzi lecturer, who were here from the beginning. And there are quite a number of you. And I suppose we have among us then some of the intellectual dawnbreakers of the association for Baha'i studies, and you all have a chance to hear from them on various occasions. It's such a pleasure. I need to say a couple other things before our speaker tonight. And anticipation makes it worth all the worthwhile, right? I need to thank, on behalf of the Executive Committee, the local spiritual assemblies of the Baha'is of Cambridge and Boston. Without their support, this conference simply would not have been possible. And in addition to those local assemblies, there are hosts of friends from the wider area that have contributed in ways that many of you will not even have noticed to make this conference successful. So also thank you to all the volunteers. Finally, a couple of little logistical things that will help you all survive the weekend. If some of you are looking for and don't yet have maps of the hotel to find rooms, they can be obtained at the front desk. If some of you are looking for meals, we've arranged buffet lunches and dinners, both on the main restaurant level, and also it might be harder to find, if you're not aware of it, on the top floor of the hotel in what is known as the Spinnaker. There's quite a lot of space to feed people. And speaking of space, we know we're in a fairly tight space. We're going to have a lot of bodies. Baha'is love to congregate in lobbies. We really ought to just rent a huge lobby for one of these conferences one day. But the lobby here will be tight. And so we ask you to be conscious and considerate of other guests of the hotel staff. And there are places you can congregate. There's a courtyard outside. There's the Spinnaker upstairs. There are other places you can seek out. So please be sensitive to those space constraints and needs. Now it's my great pleasure to introduce Councillor Stephen Berkland. Stephen Berkland is a member of the Continental Board of Counselors for the Americas. And for those of you who aren't quite clear what that means, just a couple of words. In the Baha'i community there are two arms of administration and guidance. One arm is comprised of elected bodies that have governing authority. The highest of those bodies is the Universal House of Justice, an international body that guides the affairs of the entire Baha'i world. That body appoints another arm of individuals whose function is to advise and encourage both elected assemblies at local and national levels and the Baha'i community in general. The House of Justice has written that the purpose of this appointed arm, of which the Continental Board of Counselors comprise the main body, their purpose is, quote, to promote the spiritual, intellectual and social aspects of Baha'i life. To promote the intellectual aspects of Baha'i life, among other things. Well how appropriate then that at this conference where we come together to study and deepen our understanding of this faith and its application to the needs of humanity, how appropriate that the conference begins with a member of this Continental Board. Councillor Birkland is going to speak to us tonight on the theme of pursuing Baha'i scholarship within the context of the Divine Plan. For those of you who don't know what the Divine Plan refers to, I'll let Stephen Birkland inform you. Thank you. Thank you Mike. Please consider two excerpts from the writings of Baha'u'llah. The world's equilibrium has been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new world order. Mankind's ordered life has been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous system, the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed. Unveiled and unconcealed, this wronged one hath at all times proclaimed before the face of all the peoples of the world that which will serve as the key for unlocking the doors of sciences, of arts, of knowledge, of well-being, of prosperity, and wealth. So, this intervention from the world of God into human history set in motion processes that are advancing at faster and faster rates. These processes are like rays of the sun illuminating and revealing the true spiritual nature of reality. Now, this acceleration, this recent acceleration is really awe-inspiring. It's thrilling, really, to observe, but it also, I think, among us has created some exhaustion and even some uncertainty about what our next step should be. Those of us who are thinking, what should I do next to be a part to serve this great enterprise? So, I wanted to talk a little bit tonight about those two things. The exhaustion part, well, let's call it the perseverance part. The perseverance and persistence part, and the part that requires clarity of vision. Before I go on, I do want to thank the Association for Buying Studies for choosing this theme. Like the National Spiritual Assembly of Canada and in the United States, I'm delighted that they chose this theme. And I want to thank all those who have prepared presentations and all of you who are going to participate in this discourse this weekend. So, the speed and the complexity that characterizes the acceleration of these processes really has created sort of a gasping sense of how can we persevere, how can we persist, how can we keep up with it, and so on. And some uncertainty, some uncertainty about what the next step should be. How do I know this is the right path for me, and so on. There are two stories from the life of Abdul Baha that I wanted to share with you related to that. The first one has to do with the exhaustion part. Abdul Baha, when he was in San Francisco, returned to the hotel. Now he'd been traveling for months. He was absolutely exhausted all day with the friends, all day giving talks, meeting people, and so on. It was late in the day. It was exhausted. He sat down and he actually told those around him that he didn't think he could get up and that he was even too tired to sleep, he said. And then he laughed and he said, that reminds me of the blacksmith who had an apprentice who was absolutely exhausted. And the apprentice said, finally, when he was pumping, you know, he said, I think I'm going to die. According to Abdul Baha, the blacksmith said, go ahead and die, but keep pumping. And Abdul Baha laughed and he got up and went into the next room to greet the friends and give a talk. The other story has to do with this idea of focus and vision and so on. And this story occurred when Abdul Baha was in Aqqa. And it was written by a person, Dr. Yunus Afarukte, the Yunus Khan. He referred to as Yunus Khan. He said that he was always amazed that Abdul Baha could handle so many things at once, that his mind could could grasp so many things at the same time. And he always wondered how he did it. And one night, Abdul Baha was pacing up and back and forth in this hall in the house of Abdulapasha in Aqqa, the prison city. Yunus Khan was there, was the only one there with him. Abdul Baha was pacing up, back and forth, exercising and meditating. And he walked over to, and Yunus Khan was thinking, I wonder how he does it to keep track of all these things and stay focused and so on. And Yunus Khan said that Abdul Baha walked over to him and said, Do you want to know how I do it? And he was so shocked, Yunus Khan said he was so shocked, he was speechless. And then Abdul Baha says, I'll tell you how I do it. He said, I get into the boat, I set the sail, I point it to a spot on the horizon, and then I hold tight on the rudder, and I don't deviate. Well, actually, there's another story. It's a sweet story about when Abdul Baha was in Montreal, because when he was in Montreal, Abdul Baha came down one day without any of the other Baha'is with him, walked out, got on a streetcar and rode it to the end of the city. And then he got on another streetcar and rode it to the absolute opposite end of the city and came down, and he was telling the story. He said to the friends when he got back, he said, when he came down he realized he didn't know where he was. He was lost. And he didn't know what to do. And he said he got a taxi and he said he needed to go to his hotel. So the taxi driver started driving into town and then said, well, you know, which hotel? And Abdul Baha said, I didn't know the name of the hotel. And so the taxi driver kept driving and finally said, well, you know, I'll have to know the name of the hotel. And Abdul Baha said he didn't know what to do. And he said, just go straight, just go straight. And he went straight and he came across the hotel. Abdul Baha recognized it. I think I actually think about that story quite a bit because I think oftentimes I feel lost. And I think about this vision that the Universal House of Justice provides with this sort of latest unfoldment of the latest stage of the divine plan. So I'd like to talk about those two things, all right? The die but keep pumping part. And the just go straight part, okay? According to Baha'u'llah, vision is the chief instrument whereby understanding can function. Baha'u'llah in another tablet said that according to men of wisdom, keenness of understanding is due to keenness of vision. So I'm certain, I'm certain that there is great value when an individual takes initiative to pursue some scholarly study of the Baha'i writings in itself, in and of itself. I'm sure there's great value, I'm certain that it is. And I enjoy the product of that. However, I often think about the value that comes to not only the individual but the community as well when that same study is pursued, when it's prompted, when it's prompted by a desire to serve the aim of the current plan. In other words, scholarship within the context of the current global plan. I think of the greater benefit that comes from this. Now, so I want to talk a little bit about the current global plan. You know, I remember I mentioned about how this intervention of God in human history set in motion these processes. And these processes according to the Baha'i writings are advanced through forces related to a plan of God which has two parts according to the Baha'i writings. One called the major plan of God, one called the minor plan of God. Now the major plan of God, Shoghi Effendi called the overall plan of God, moves mysteriously and in contrast to the orderly and well-known processes of a clearly devised plan. And it has received an impetus, the force of which only posterity can adequately assess. In fact, the Guardian said, referring to the major plan of God, that it was using both the mighty and lowly as pawns in his world-shaping game. So this greater plan of God that moves mysteriously and not according to some order that we're aware of, or that we've discovered yet, discloses or reveals the obsolescence or the bankruptcy of many of the current assumptions and mental models. It creates receptivity for the work of the minor plan, which is ours. Now the minor plan isn't, it's not minor to us, it's just minor in comparison to God's plan, because the minor plan of God, according to the Universal House of Justice, is that part of God's plan that's revealed by Baha'u'llah to his followers and is laid out for them in detailed instructions and successive plans by Abdu'l-Baha, Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice. In contrast to the major plan of God, it proceeds in a methodical, ordered way, disseminating his teachings and raising up the structure of a united world society. So the head of the faith guides the Universal House of Justice now, guides the unfoldment of each successive stage of this divine plan that will bring the world to a united state. And we're currently in the five-year plan, we're currently in the last year of a five-year plan and there'll be another five-year plan that begins next spring. So I wanted to consider some of the features just for a moment as you consider scholarship and the examination of science and religion and social transformation in the context of the current global plan. Consider some of the features of this current plan. It's really quite exciting. To begin with, we have to consider what the Universal House of Justice said about this, that these plans display or are pursued in the framework of a dynamic coherence between the spiritual and practical requirements of life on earth. That's illustrated the Universal House of Justice said by the Mashu Klaskar, The House of Worship, because as a building, as a structure, its intent is only spiritual. It's the dawning place of the mention of God. So at the center in this architecture, at the center is this spiritual building and then emanating from it are these dependencies or institutions related to the practical aspects of life, spiritual in the center and then practical emanating from it around it. And the Universal House of Justice reminds us that the oneness of mankind is at once the operating principle and the ultimate goal of the revelation. So unity is not only our ultimate goal but our operating principle. There are some groups and organizations in the world who feel so passionate and so committed to their aim that they feel that the aim is so great it justifies any means, not in the Baha'i Faith. In the Baha'i Faith the ultimate goal and the operating principles are the same, unity. We pursue unity in a unified way. So think about some of the things first of all now in the five-year plan. First of all, the Universal House of Justice, what did they do? They asked us to divide up the planet into smaller pieces like little laboratories where we could plan and manage growth. They said, we need to go about this in a very systematized way. In fact, in one letter preceding the five-year plan they wrote that our goal cannot be achieved by a mere series of spasmodic, uncoordinated exertions no matter how enthusiastic. They drove home the point. They said, we have to pursue this in a more systematic way. In fact, they said that systematization was a necessary mode of functioning animated by the urgency to act. Well, that didn't make sense at all when I first read it. I thought when I thought of urgency, I thought of frenetic activity. But of course, as we know from, I mean, I just read something. I just read something. I've been trying to learn more about physics. And I just read a very interesting article about, you know, about a mob behavior, a panic behavior, okay? And according to this research, now they can't do research, you know, where they put a bunch of people in a nightclub and started on fire or anything. But they can do computer models, right? They can do computer models of this. And they found in these computer models that if humans walk or run or whatever, four feet per second or less, everybody gets out. And that whenever they go more than four feet per second, no one gets out. So systematization is the necessary mode of functioning animated by the urgency to act. Another feature of this plan that's intriguing to me is how in some ways, just like the Mashu Kalaskar, I have a feeling, now this is just my opinion. You know that the Universal House of Justice, you know that the House of Justice at the beginning of the five-year plan, they said that after you split up the planet, survey it for a survey of these little clusters of communities, and then initiate three activities, all spiritual activities, and make those the core of the high community life, those three spiritual activities. Pray together, study together, and train your children. Okay, so praying together, studying together, and training our children. Those core spiritual activities that they should be the center. And that other things should be on the periphery. So now we started looking at, you know, and this is again, I said this is my opinion, but in some ways, as somewhat of a veteran in the Baha'i Faith, I noticed that in many Baha'i communities, you know, because we're talking in the context of social transformation, right, in many communities as the communities grew, service on administrative institutions began to be the core of activity in Baha'i communities. So this plan now displaces that notion and places three spiritual activities at the core of community life. Praying together, studying together, and training our children. All of them having to do with access to the Word of God. Each of those activities have to do with access to the Word of God. Because as the Universal House of Justice said, the Holy Word has been extolled by the prophets of God as the medium of celestial power and the wellspring of all spiritual, social, and material progress. Access to it, constant study of it, and daily use of it in our individual lives, are vital to the interpersonal transformation towards which we strive, and whose ultimate outer manifestation will be the emergence of that divine civilization, which is the promise of the world order of Baha'u'llah. So access to the Word of God is vital to social transformation. So placed at the center of Baha'i community life are three activities all having to do directly with access to the Word of God. Then they said, we need to create metrics and measurements so that we can plan systematically and reflect on what we're learning and refine and plan and reflect and act and so on. In other words, they initiated an orientation to action research in these little laboratories all around the world and set up mechanisms in which we can share what we're learning within these laboratories and with other laboratories around the world. Then they said there needs to be a culture of encouragement that will facilitate this learning and sustainability is an important feature of this. Sustainability. So they introduced the idea of an institute for training to inspire, to give knowledge, to build skills and so on so that at the grassroots these processes can be sustained. Now I don't know about you but I don't know if you've read anything about non-equilibrium systems or critical phase transitions or fluctuations but it's pervasive in this whole model, this whole scheme. Think what we need, think what we could gain now if scholars are pursuing whether they're artists, sociologists, economists, physicists. Think what we can, historians, what we can gain if they're pursuing the scholarship within the context or the framework of this latest sort of stage of the divine plan. What we're learning about learning, what can we engineer and what remains mysterious? What are we learning about governance? Mike was talking about this institution of the counselors, that arm of the administration. I was thinking about the need to keep spiritual at the core and I came across this description of the role of the auxiliary board members, an institution that's auxiliary to the Continental Board of Counselors. This challenging conception of the work of the auxiliary board members calls for a fundamental departure from limited assumptions about social order which in the world today determined administrative theory and practice for it aspires to infuse every act individual and collective with spiritual meaning. It places the sacred at the heart of community life making it the focus of all reflection on activity. An institution whose goal, whose objective is to infuse a sense of the sacred into everything we're doing. So not only is there sustainability in terms of training, but sustainability in terms of the spiritual vision. Well, you can see why the Universal House of Justice calls for the unreserved participation of the Baha'is in this current global plan to view teaching as the greatest gift of God to man. Because imagine the vision of any of us, but especially those of us, those of you with great capacity and well-trained minds who have firsthand experience with this social transformation occurring in the Baha'i community, this change of culture in the Baha'i community, this scheme of the Universal House of Justice. Well, let me just talk a minute now about the keep a die but keep pumping part. It really calls from some serious adjustments because I don't see how we can participate in this current plan, how we can have firsthand experience in this current plan if we don't reorganize our life. Challenging current assumptions among our peers, offering spiritual perspectives, most certainly is going to draw criticism. But the Universal House of Justice said, be not dismayed if your endeavors are dismissed as utopian by the voices that would oppose any suggestion of fundamental change. Trust in the capacity of this generation to disentangle itself from the embroilments of a divided world to discharge your responsibilities you will have to show forth courage, the courage of those who cling to standards of rectitude, who champion the cause of justice, whose lives are characterized by purity of thought and action and whose purpose is directed by love and indomitable faith. In fact, let me just share with you something, a tablet from Abdul Baha. I was sitting really seriously, this actually happened, I'm not making this up. I was sitting in my office, I was thinking, I am exhausted. And I said, I bet you're reading something from the writing's wood. Give me some energy, right? So the first, I opened the book, this is absolute true. I opened the book and I read, Indulge not your bodies with rest.  Thus may you make this world the Abha Paradise and this globe of earth the parade ground of the realm on high. If only exert the effort, it is certain that these splendors will shine out. These clouds of mercy will shed down their rain, these life-giving winds will rise and blow and this sweet-smelling musk will be scattered far and wide. Whatever may happen is for the best. Because affliction is but the essence of bounty and sorrow and toil are mercy unalloyed. And anguish is peace of mind. And to make a sacrifice is to receive a gift. And whatsoever may come to pass is issued from God's grace. Finally friends, I want to just ask you to consider another point about this persistence and perseverance part. It's a warning really. One of the letters that was written by the Universal House of Justice had a paragraph that began by, lest you be distracted, lest you be distracted. And I've been thinking a lot about how to keep our focus and our vision and not be distracted. And the one point that I wanted to emphasize tonight is how distracting it can be when we are tripped up by our own thoughts of our own failures or shortcomings or regrets. This is a big distraction. And the beloved guardian said, regarding your own condition, he strongly urges you not to dwell on yourself. Each one of us, if we look into our failures, is sure to feel unworthy and despondent. And this feeling only frustrates our constructive efforts and wastes time. The thing for us to focus on is the glory of the cause and the power of Bahá'u'lláh, which can make of a mere drop a surging sea. Well, let me close with one more statement from the Universal House of Justice about this time we're living in and our responsibility. Our lot, dear brothers and sisters, is to be consciously involved in a vast historic process, the like of which has not ever before been experienced by any people. As a global community, we have thus far attained a unique and magnificent success in being representative of the full spectrum of the human race thanks to the inestimable expenditure of life, effort, and treasure, willingly made by thousands of our spiritual forebears. There's no other aggregation of human beings who can claim to have raised up a system with the demonstrated capacity to unite all of God's children in one world-embracing order. This achievement places us not only in a position of incomparable strength, but more particularly in one of inescapable responsibility. Does not every one of us therefore have a divine obligation to fulfill, a sacred duty to perform towards every other one who is not yet aware of the call of God's latest manifestation? Time does not stop, does not wait. With every passing hour a fresh affliction strikes at a distracted humanity. Dare we linger?


Santa knows where all the best toys are and this December many of the Hunter's smartphones are just a penny with service in Appalachian Wireless. Stop by your local Appalachian Wireless to check out all of the great smartphone deals that consistently top the nice lists. This Christmas is truly going to be bigger and better than ever. Better service, bigger savings, that is. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. You know, I thank God every day for these kids and coaches and community we live in. This has been a fantastic group to work with in a great area in school, you know, to be a part of. They are, I'm just kind of overwhelmed. I mean, I think winning the championships always big to do this four times is very few teams have done that in the state of Kentucky. Before December 3, 2016, only two teams in the Commonwealth of Kentucky could call themselves four Pete State Champions. And now there's three as the Pirates add to their trophy case. Four in a row and six overall for the program after defeating Louisville Central by a score of 52 to 31. Oh, it feels great, man. We're going to come back and get a five. We did it. We did it all, man. We did it all. We ate out here. Man, I love all the seniors, man. And the line did great today, man. We did it all, man. We just bless, truly bless by everybody, man. I just love it. It feels great, you know. I mean, we came in champions, we're going out champions, you know. It's no better feeling. We just played our hearts out, did everything coach taught us all through the week. Best feeling in the world. Oh, this is real. I never think that coming to high school, I think I get one or two, but four is something crazy. I know by Eastern Kentucky's ever did. It feels amazing. When I moved here three years ago, my goal was to win one state championship. And knowing we put up that many points against Central makes it ten times better. To win my third, it's unbelievable. And I feel blessed, honestly. It's an unreal feeling.  I walk down any alley with them. It just means the world to know we're backed up by these stands right here. I love them to death. And I love all my coaches because they pushed me. I couldn't think of a better way to go out. Got tremendous fans for it.  It's overseas and everything. I get emails and texts all the time about how many people, you know, just follow us so well. And it's just fantastic. And our kids appreciate that, too. You know, I mean, look at the support we got. I mean, there's, I don't even know the attendance, but all these people came out here expecting it.  It's just like this every year. They travel anywhere in the world. We was going three hours or 30 hours. They're the best fans. Reporting in Bowling Green for EKB Sports, I'm Mikayla Colley.