The next first item of business is portfolio of questions, question 1. Brian Whittle, please. To ask the Scottish Government what value cycle tourism has to the Scottish economy. Nature, heritage and activities such as cycling are all identified as a key asset in the industry-led Tourism Scotland 2020 strategy. Based on their usage estimates of the national cycle network, the March 2017 research by Sustrans Scotland and Scottish Enterprise valued cycle tourism as adding £345 million to the Scottish economy in 2015. On Monday, I visited the Glen Tress Forest and met with local business people from the world leading mountain biking trails there. I understand that the two-week Tweedlove bike festival over two weeks in May brought 5,000 visitors and a net impact of £594,000 to the Tweed Valley economy. Brian Whittle, I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. With that in mind, does the cabinet secretary agree with me that when new road infrastructure projects are in the design phase cycle and walking paths should be an integral part of that design? Does she therefore find it regrettable that the A77 may ball bypass does not include such plans and therefore highlights yet again the south-west of Scotland being excluded from this type of investment and positive tourist outcome? Cabinet secretary, the status of Scotland's nation in particular has a focus particularly on outdoor activities in coastal routes, so I am not aware of a tourist route around the May ball bypass. Obviously, I had these questions relating to tourism, but I do know that where, for example, rail links—I referred just to my experience this week in the Tweed Valley—have used the opportunity to have cycle tracks there, as did the basket aergyline using the old solo for cycle tracks, where cycling can be part of road developments—that is a matter for Transport Scotland, I understand. Parts of the A9, for example, have cycling as part of the route development that is there, but I am sure that he can make applications and his case known to Transport Scotland. From a tourism point of view, he can be assured that I am investing and supporting the work of Visit Scotland on cycling and cycling tourism. Question 2, Angus MacDonald. To ask the Scottish Government when it last discussed the commissioning of programmes with MG Alba. Cabinet secretary, I last met MG Alba on 24 August, although what is commissioned on BBC Alba is a matter for the joint working between MG Alba and the BBC independent of Government. Scottish ministers and Government officials do, however, keep regular contact with MG Alba and a range of relevant matters are discussed. I have also recently met and discussed matters relating to the BBC Alba with the BBC. Cabinet secretary, you will be aware of the £1 million pressure fund that MG Alba has received in recent years as a top-up to their core funding, which helps MG Alba to commission extra programmes. However, if that funding is not included in MG Alba's core funding, it not only causes them concern but concerns the independent independent production sector, which relies heavily on the seasonal commissioning around the pressure fund that is used for. Will the cabinet secretary agree to raise the issue with the Deputy First Minister and the finance secretary with a view to ensuring that the £1 million pressure fund is included in MG Alba's core funding from now on? I am not responsible for the funding of MG Alba. I have responsibility for broadcasting. I am sure that the member would regret that the UK Government did not continue its £1 million funding. It is not a pressure fund. The additional funding from the Scottish Government was for specific commissioning. It is helpful to MG Alba to have had that. We are committed in our manifesto to maintain our funding for investment in MG Alba and will continue to press the BBC to increase funding for the BBC Alba programming. We have been quite clear in our manifesto on which the member was elected. I am sure that he and I will press not only the BBC but the UK to step up to the mark in their funding for MG Alba. To ask the Scottish Government what the impact is on the culture sector of reduced local government budgets. The overall increase in the spending power to support local authority services this year amounted to more than £383 million or 3.7 per cent of an increase compared to 2016-17. The 2018-19 budget will continue to treat local government fairly, despite the cuts to the Scottish budget from the UK Government. Due to the UK Government's austerity regime, we are aware that there are challenges and that we are doing all that we can to protect Scotland's culture and historic environment, and to ensure that our diverse and world-class cultural and heritage scenes continue to thrive. Of course, local councils are responsible for their own spending decisions on culture. Neil Findlay. A thoroughly depressing answer from the cabinet secretary. In the middle of the council, there are being forced to consider another £13.5 million of cuts this year, and no doubt it will be the same or more next year, including the closure of libraries. Across Scotland, sport, music, the arts and culture are in the front line with councils of all political persuasions proposing major cuts. What is the cabinet secretary doing to protect sport, culture and the cultural sector from yet more cuts? Can she tell us what representation she's made? No, after you've had one question, sorry, one supplementary cabinet secretary. The Scottish Government has consistently supported our cultural sector. It mentions libraries in particular. We have an eye personally, as the cabinet responsible minister has supported investment in libraries, and I'm looking forward to an event in the north-east to mark that on Friday. Councils are responsible for their own cultural spending. It's not a statutory requirement, and he'll be aware that in West Lothian—and I was very shocked to see this—the Labour administration, their budget estimates for 1718, was the largest out of every single local authority and council in Scotland. Others are increasing their cultural spend, but perhaps because of the austerity measures that are being impacted on us from the UK Government, he could ask his West Lothian Labour Council, which is in administration with the Conservatives, to address that point. Perhaps the figure of 14 per cent reduction compared to other areas where you actually see an increase in expenditure. East Ayrshire, for example, a 7 per cent budget estimate increase for 1718 shows in stark contrast the value that local decision makers can have in influencing their cultural impacts. Can I say to members and to the front bench that I want to get everybody in, I want supplementaries in, but questions must be brief and answers as brief as they can possibly be while answering the question. I'll take two supplementaries in those brief questions, please. Rona Mackay to be followed by Rachel Hamilton. The cabinet secretary will be aware of the significant impact a reduction in national lottery income for good causes will have on the organisations that rely on it, such as Creative Scotland. Can I ask the cabinet secretary what representation she's making to the UK Government to ensure that the impact of the reduction is mitigated? I think that it will be a concern to all members to realise that the reduction in national lottery income for good causes is reduced by 14 per cent between 15, 16 and 17, and by a further 4 per cent in the first half of 2017-18. Along with the sports minister, Eileen Campbell, we have written to our counterparts in the UK Government to urge them because of the reduction in that income, some of it from the decision-making made by the UK Government in relation to the lottery that they need to take a license of that in their forthcoming budget. In addition to that letter to Karen Bradley, Derek Mackay, the finance minister, also wrote to the UK Treasury and relayed the concerns of a number of issues, including the reduction in lottery funding for both culture and sports. Rachael Hamilton Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. We all saw the letter that the cabinet secretary wrote to the UK Government on cultural funding through national lottery. As she described, funding is going down. No, no, I want a question, please. It's absurd to depict this as a UK Government cut. Given that she called on the UK Government to develop a recovery plan to meet the shortfall, can the cabinet secretary confirm that the Scottish Government has a plan, too? Will she commit to meeting the publication of the plan? Rachael Hamilton I said that it wasn't a cut from the UK Government. I specifically said that it was a reduction in national lottery income. However, the decisions that the UK Government makes in terms of the licensing and indeed the range of lotteries that they make available have an impact in the choice available and can have an impact in the income level, so that they have a responsibility. That is why we think that it is incumbent on the UK Government to address that. For our part, over the many years, despite the reductions in UK funding for Scotland, we have protected cultural funding because we think that cultural funding is important to the life of this country, but also to its economic impact. Question 4, Stuart Stevenson. Stuart Stevenson To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the UK Government regarding the future of UK EU nationals currently working in Scotland post-Brexit. Minister Alasdair Allan The Scottish Government has repeatedly urged the UK Government to guarantee the rights of EU citizens and their families living in the UK post-Brexit. We want EU citizens in Scotland to feel settled and secure and to continue to make a strong contribution to our country. The Scottish Government has not been substantially engaged in the detail of the negotiations. Last week, the Scottish Government provided the UK Migration Advisory Committee with the latest evidence on the overwhelmingly positive contribution that EU citizens make to Scotland and the vital importance of continued free movement in delivering future population growth and economic growth. Stuart Stevenson Does the minister see any prospect of a solution to the fishing industry problems that has 70 per cent of workers in the north-east of Scotland are not UK nationals? As the member points out, that is a huge problem for Scotland's onshore processing sector, where EU nationals make up 58 per cent of the workforce in large seafood processing factories and in the Grampian area even higher. As we have made clear, those who choose to live and work in Scotland, whether they are from the EU or elsewhere, are welcome and needed. It is for exactly this reason why the UK Government must give assurances that I have been asking for those assurances and for the UK Government immediately to remove the unnecessary uncertainty to both businesses and to the workers that the member refers to. To ask the Scottish Government how it ensures that there is transparency regarding lobbying when its international development fund offers humanitarian aid. Minister The Scottish Government's £1 million humanitarian emergency fund is activated and distributed in response to the launch of a disaster's emergency committee appeal or on the recommendation of the independent expert HEF panel, which is made up of eight of the leading humanitarian aid organisations in Scotland. Would the minister agree that it was concerning to hear reports last week that the former UK Government international development minister Pertie Patel held secret discussions about routing aid through the Israeli military? Can I ask the minister what representations he has made to the UK Government to ensure that their decision making on humanitarian aid allocations is transparent and free from undue political interference? I hear the muttering from some quarters opposite, but I struggle to visualise what would have happened to me if I had gone on a rogue mission to offer to give Scottish aid money to a Government in Israel to use through its military in an area of land that is not recognised as their territory by the UK. I think that enough has been said about that matter. Suffice to say that I have written to the foreign secretary to ask what exactly Pertie Patel was thinking of in this instance. Alexander Burnett Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I ask the minister what the last award of emergency humanitarian aid by the Scottish Government was and is it arranging to make any other soon? Minister Well, we have recently assisted the Rohingya people and their plight fleeing from real persecution and ending up in camps in Burma, and we continue to receive representations both from the sector and more generally about the best use of the fund in the future, but we take very seriously our responsibility to disperse that in a fair basis. 16. Gaye To ask the Scottish Government what support it provides for community radio stations such as East Coast FM in East Lothian. Community radio channels received a total of £307,000 from the Scottish Government for running public information adverts between January 2011 and November 2017. Off-Gomad ministers a community radio fund, which has been taking applications for 2017-18. The fund can be accessed by Scottish-based stations such as East Coast FM. I met its director, Mr Ian Robertson, last year at the invitation of Mr Gray, and I would like to congratulate Mr Robertson on his silver award as a volunteer of the year at this year's UK community radio awards. Indeed, that is much appreciated and the minister will be pleased to know that East Coast FM received yet further awards of Princess Royal Training award recently at St James's Palace, where they were one of 40 businesses chosen for creating lasting impact by successfully linking their skills development needs to business performance. That demonstrates, I think, the important role beyond simple broadcast media that they play. Could they not receive more support than they do from our Government? When we last met the member who raised the situation in Wales, he will be aware that the Welsh Government closed its radio fund in 2013-14. I have written to Mr Gray outlining the number of different funding sources that community radio can access, and I encourage him to ensure that that communication is communicated to Mr Robertson as well as my congratulations. Question 7, Bob Doris. To ask the Scottish Government what support it offers communities in Glasgow, Maryhill and Springburn constituency to celebrate the area's cultural history. Creator Scotland and Historic Environment Scotland promote the rich culture and traditions of our communities in many different ways. In 2016, the Maryhill Barrow Halls Trust received almost £5,000 from Creator Scotland for the Maryhill Songwick, which is inspired by historic poems in the Trust's collection, which relate to Maryhill. Toonspeak Young People's Theatre received £30,000 from Creator Scotland for the Mabit, a large-scale contemporary musical theatre production created by young people, helping to build a greater connection for young people in the communities, and Historic Environment Scotland's support fund can provide grant assistance of up to £5,000 for one-off heritage-related events. Bob Doris. Can I draw the cabinet secretary's attention to plans for a Maryhill museum based at the stunningly restored Barrow Halls in my constituency, mentioned by the cabinet secretary? Can I extend an invite to the cabinet secretary to join me to see for herself perhaps at some point in the near the importance of the excellent work that has been undertaken by Maryhill Barrow Halls? Cabinet secretary. I'd be delighted to, Dario, permission to return to Maryhill Barrow Halls. I was there at the official opening when it was reopened after extensive investment. I think that it's a great celebration of tradition's history, but engagement is also with the local community. Brief supplementary, Annie Wells. Thank you, Deputy Prime Minister. Glasgow is a fabulous culture that has been celebrated over the years. What discussions has the Scottish Government had with Glasgow City Council ahead of their upcoming budget to ensure that proper support and funding is given to local communities to encourage tourism? I'll be meeting with Glasgow City Council in the next few weeks. Only this morning, I was in Glasgow, I was hearing about the GI festival, it's going to be fantastic, and I met Glasgow life representatives there. I think that the new ministeration in Glasgow is to be commended for putting centre stage its approach to culture and creativity. I look forward to engaging with Glasgow City Council as we move forward to a very exciting year, with the anniversary of a year of Celtic Connections and also the European Championships, which again will be a great opportunity to showcase and celebrate the great traditions of Glasgow, the great city. Question 8, John Scott. Thank you, Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government what recent discussions it has had with Visit Scotland regarding tourism in Ayrshire. Cabinet Secretary. The Scottish Government programme for government commits us to promoting the south of Scotland in Ayrshire as a tourism destination for coastal and forest tourism activities. I met Malcolm Ruffhead, the CEO to Visit Scotland only last week, and part of our discussion was about progress and how Visit Scotland is taking forward that commitment. In particular, there is to be a two-week-long digital skills push to increase the number of Ayrshire tourist businesses using digital channels. John Scott. Thank you. I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer. The cabinet secretary will be aware that Visit Scotland's proposal recently announced will mean that there will not be a tourist hub on mainland Ayrshire and that information about Ayrshire is to be provided in future from either the hub in Dumfries or Glasgow. As I think it's unreasonable that Ayrshire should be neglected in that way, will the cabinet secretary join with me in making representation to Visit Scotland that a presence is retained in Ayr, please? Well, clearly, those are operational matters for Visit Scotland, but he will be aware that there has been a 58 per cent drop in visitor numbers to the Visit Scotland die centres and a 62 per cent drop in particular in Ayr, the footfall in Ayr, drop from 50,000 in 2067 to 19,000. He's wrong to say that there isn't any information. There will be information through the partners. There are 1,500 new visitor information partners, including a number in Ayr itself. I would note that, in the discussions that Visit Scotland had with South Ayrshire Council, just in the recent weeks and the meeting subsequent to the announcement, the three Ayrshire councils did not have closure of the Visit Scotland site on the agenda as a council item. Clearly, we need to move into additional age, and it's very important that we encourage those. We now have two out of three visitors who are always using their internet access to provide bookings. It's very important that we move into additional age and encourage businesses in Ayr and Ayrshire to get involved with the Visit Scotland information partnership programme, because that is the way that tourism is moving. Indeed, the programme that's been set out by Visit Scotland has been supported by the Scottish Tourism Alliance. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I note my register of interest in relation to businesses and the tourism sector. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the proposed tourism initiative for North East 250. We welcome the industry-led initiatives such as North East 250. Of course, that is a privately developed route launched on 8 November. It has the potential to encourage visitors to experience the wonderful scenery, the rich culture and the numerous attractions that the north-east has to offer, from coastal villages in Banffanbuckan, the distilleries of Spaceside, Royal Deaside to the vibrant city of Aberdeen. Alexander Burnett, and very briefly please. I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer. I'm grateful to see his initiative come to the north-east. Can I ask the cabinet secretary what date of the Scottish Government will be looking to collect in order to determine the success of a project so that this initiative can be replicated elsewhere? Cabinet secretary, that initiative hasn't come to the north-east. It's been developed by private interests in the north-east. Obviously, I'd encourage them to engage with everybody to see the progress of that, but if it's anything like the North Coast 500, it's got great potential to maximise the economic impact, but it's very important that all the north-east can benefit. I hope that that engagement and that inclusion will be part of the privately-led initiative. That concludes questions on that particular portfolio. I apologise to Bruce Crawford for not reaching him. We'll try better next time, Mr Crawford. I move on to questions to justice and law officers. Question 1, Anna Sarwar, please. To ask the Scottish Government how much the integration of British transport police in Scotland into police Scotland will cost. Cabinet secretary. The Scottish Government set out the projected cost of railway policing in the financial memorandum to the Railway Policing Scotland Act. The costs under current arrangements are around £20 million per annum, and the financial memorandum assumes an envelope that is the same in real terms following integration. At the cost of railway policing in Scotland, the following integration will continue to be funded through contributions from the railway industry. Anna Sarwar. The cabinet secretary will be aware that Police Scotland submitted evidence to the Justice Subcommittee's statement that he didn't know the cost of the merger. He will also be aware that not a single trade union or staff association representing the workforce supports the merger, not the British Transport Police Federation, not the TSSA, the RMT or indeed the STUC. Surely the minister must now accept that this is a merger that the workers do not want and passengers don't need. Isn't it time that we ended this politically motivated merger? Up now, Mrs Sarwar, supplementary, not a long ramble on to it. Cabinet secretary, please. The Parliament considered these matters, including the Justice Committee, and voted on the bill. The bill was supported by a majority of members in the Parliament, and the Government is now taking that policy forward. A brief supplementary, Liam Kerr, please. No details have been provided about which staff body will represent the employment interests of the BTP officers north of the border after the force is abolished. Will the cabinet secretary end that uncertainty now? Cabinet secretary. As the member will be aware, the Justice Committee has written to me on that matter, looking for further details on the response to the committee in due course. Question 2, Linda Fabiani, please. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the mandatory imposition of non-harassment orders on people convicted of domestic abuse. Cabinet secretary. The domestic abuse bill, currently before Parliament, strengthens the system of non-harassment orders by requiring a court in every domestic abuse case to consider, always consider whether to impose protection for the victim. That improves on the existing system, which requires an application to be made by the prosecutor. Consider that discretion should remain with the court in any given case. That is because there may be cases where such an order is not appropriate and the court needs discretion to ensure that a decision can always be made on the basis of the facts and circumstances in a given case. Linda Fabiani. May I ask the cabinet secretary as the bill moves forward to give further consideration to this and, in particular, the fundamental principle that the owners should not be on the victim to justify the need for a non-harassment order, but on the convicted perpetrator to justify why a non-harassment order should not apply. Cabinet secretary. Absolutely. We think that the requirement for the court to consider granting a non-harassment order in each case and to give reasons for its decision will help to ensure that non-harassment orders are granted to protect victims where this is appropriate and necessary. However, we are always happy to engage with members to consider whether there are further ways in which the bill could be strengthened. I have no doubt that the member will continue to make representations on those issues, as she has on behalf of her constituent over a period of time. However, we believe that the system still requires to have a level of discretion for the courts in deciding whether a non-harassment order should be applied. Three brief supplementaries in this. I will take Claire Baker, followed by Liam McArthur, followed by Margaret Mitchell. Claire Baker, please. Thank you. I am very supportive of domestic violence disclosure scheme, known as Claire's law, and it has recognised its value. However, if the cabinet secretary has a view on a petition that was launched this week calling for a domestic abusers official register, similar to the sex offenders register. I am aware of the petition and will give consideration to the matters that are raised within it. We as a Government are committed to taking forward a range of measures in order to tackle the issue of domestic violence in society. There is still much more work that we have to take forward in addressing that. We will give due consideration to the issues that are raised within the petition. Liam McArthur, please. I welcome the moves that are outlined by the cabinet secretary. What considerations have you given to extending the non-harassment orders to cover children, particularly where those children are referred to as an aggravation in a particular case? The member will be aware that I am due to appear at the Justice Committee for stage 2 of consideration of the bill and have lodged amendment in order to extend the provision of non-harassment orders to children in the circumstances, nor to improve the protections that can be made available to them. That is reflecting on the evidence that the Justice Committee received at stage 1, particularly from children's organisations, about the impact that domestic violence can have on children. I was pleased to see that the amendments that I lodged on Monday of this week were welcomed by a number of the children's organisations who have been calling for an extension of their provision. Margaret Mitchell Does the minister agree that, if the same sheriff who heard the evidence in a domestic abuse case in the criminal court ruled in civil order such as non-harassment orders following a domestic abuse conviction, then domestic abuse survivors would suffer less trauma? If so, can he confirm that the one-judge proposal will be included in the family justice modernisation study consultation? Cabinet Secretary, my colleague Annabelle Ewing has taken forward the consultation into her review of family law, and we will look at a range of measures. No doubt the particular issue that the member has raised is one of the factors that will be taken into account as part of any consultation. If the member wishes to provide further information specifically on that particular proposal, I have no doubt that my colleague will be more than happy to give it due consideration. Bill Bowman To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to tackle urban crime. Cabinet Secretary, my apologies minister. The Scottish Government remains committed to tackling urban crime across Scotland. Overall, crime levels are at a 43-year low. Violent crime is down by almost half since 2006-07, and homicides are at their lowest since records began. The Scottish Government is committed to building safer communities by supporting local authorities. Partner agencies such as Crime Stoppers, Neighbourhood Watch Scotland, the Valence Reduction Unit and the Scottish Business Resilience Centre and communities themselves in helping to create an environment where people feel safe and supported and where everyone takes responsibility for their own actions and how they affect others. Bill Bowman Thank you for that answer, and I welcome any reduction in crime, but official figures for the past year show that Dundee is sadly one of the worst areas for violent crime, worst for sexual crime and attacks on NHS Tayside staff are up. What guarantee can you give Dundonians that those figures will be lower next year? Maureen Watt I understand that there has been a spike in crimes of murder in Dundee over the past year. We are committed to tackling all forms of violence across Scotland wherever they manifest themselves, and we will continue to work with our national local partners to make our communities safer and stronger. Our strategy is focused on tough enforcement, but it is also coupled with education, early intervention and diversion activity, which is very important. Our work, for example, with the Valence Reduction Unit, which has secured Scottish Government support of some £8.7 million since 2008 and has developed key initiatives that I am sure the member is aware of, such as the No Nives Better Lives campaign, the Medic Against Violence and the Important Navigator programme. We are absolutely committed to doing everything that we can to tackle violence across Scotland, including, of course, in Dundee. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to reduce the number of bail-related offences. The Scottish Government is keen to discourage breaches of bail. That is why we have made it easier to bring charges for such breaches, decisions in any given case, as to whether to grant bail is a matter for our independent courts. Murdo Fraser. I thank the cabinet secretary for his response, but I am sure that he is aware of a significant increase in the number of people breaching bail conditions. In 2006-07, one in eight bail orders were breached, but figures for 2015-16 show that that is now one in five. In light of the recent high-profile sexual assault case— No, please, a question. Were bail conditions were breached with tragic consequences? Can the minister confirm that the Scottish Government is considering additional measures to enforce bail conditions in order to protect the most vulnerable victims of crime? We have taken forward two separate measures in recent years in 2007 in order to tighten up bail-related matters, and again in 2010, specifically through legislation. There were 8,563 bail-related offences in 2015-16, very similar to previous years. Between 2008-09 and 2015-16, bail-related offences decreased by 6 per cent, so there has been a reduction in the number of offences that have been committed on bail. However, that is why we also took forward additional measures through the criminal proceedings reform Scotland Act 2007 and the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act in order to make it easier for our courts to deal with breaches of bail and to tighten up the conditions under which bail can be granted. However, the member is incorrect in stating that bail overall breaches on bail are up. Where the statistics show between 2008-09 and 2005-16, the most recent figures on bail-related offences have decreased by 6 per cent. To ask the Scottish Government what progress has been made with its commitment to modernise the prison estate. I recently announced plans for the modernisation of the women's estate on completion of those projects. Proposals for the next phase of the estate development programme will get under way. The next phase comprises of construction of HMP Highland to replace HMP Inverness, HMP Glasgow to replace HMP Barlinny and also the proposed replacement of HMP Grinock. Currently, there is no mention of HMP Dumfries within the future strategic and corporate plan for the Scottish Prison Service. That is of obvious concern to staff who work at the facility. What reassurances can the minister give the staff in Dumfries in regards to the long-term future of the prison? HMP Dumfries is an important part of the existing range of provisions that we have within the Scottish Prison Service. As I have said, we already have a capital investment programme that is going forward in a number of phases. As a Government, we have invested tens of millions, hundreds of millions in our overall prison estate in order to make sure that it is fit for purpose. We are continuing that programme over the coming years. As I said, we are already taking forward the next phase of the estate's plan. After we have completed that process, we will then look at the remaining elements of the prison estate, including that of HMP Dumfries and HMP Open Estate Castle Huntley. I should also indicate to the member that, given the capital cost that is involved in investing in our prison estate, one of the major inhibitors to be able to invest in our prison estate has been the very significant cuts that the UK Government has been applying to our capital budgets. Mary Fee. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The Cabinet Secretary will be aware that I work closely with families outside. I am keen to see progress made in improving the relationships that prisoners have with their children. Does the cabinet secretary have any plans to make improvements across the prison estate to the facilities that are available when children visit a parent, to make the visit less imposing and to help both parents and children to maintain and develop close bonds? We have been taking forward work with a number of third sector organisations to provide visitor centres within a number of our prison establishments. I had the pleasure of opening the new visitor centre at Glen Oco several months ago, which is a facility that is specifically designed in order to accommodate the needs of children where they may be visiting establishments. We have provided resources to allow that to be provided in some other prison establishments across the rest of the prison estate. We want to continue to build on that progress going forward. I recognise that we know that maintaining family life and supporting family life can be an important element to promoting assistance among offenders and family centres in our prison system. It is an important role to play in helping to support and maintain those relationships. The additional resources that we have been providing for some of those facilities to be established in a number of our prison establishments is what we want to continue to see moving forward in the months and years ahead. To ask the Scottish Government what support it provides the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to ensure that it can continue to provide a existing level of service. The Scottish Government has provided the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service with a budget in 2017-18 of £316.4 million, an increase of £21.7 million from the previous year. That budget has allowed the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to protect front-line services, notwithstanding significant cuts to Scotland's budget from Westminster. Of course, the funding for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service would go much further if the UK Government would allow the service to recover vat like other fire services across the UK, adding an estimated £10 million to its annual budget. The Scottish Government will continue to press for a change to that legislation to remedy this long-running iniquity. Claudia Beamish I agree with the minister on the vat issue. Given the geographical spread of South Scotland region, any cuts will put communities at risk. Does the minister agree with me that local community engagement is essential and that fire stations should be at the core of our communities and officers known in them, such as the recent Bond for our awareness event at St Mary's primary school in Lanark? Can the minister please give me assurances today that no fire stations will close or that there will be any reduction in services in South Scotland and, indeed, in Scotland more generally? Claudia Beamish I would also like to pay tribute to the event that the member referred to at St Mary's primary school in relation to Bond for our awareness, which is a very important event, and one that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service participates in day and daily across the country. The member is alluding to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service transformation plans, draft plans, which have been put on the intranet of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. Of course, the transformation proposals are out subject to discussion and no final decisions have been made as to what transformation will look like. There is a commitment to engage fully with not just staff but also the services that hold members of the public. I would reiterate once again that being deprived of the sum of £10 million per annum from front-line emergency services provided by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is certainly not a help, Presiding Officer. I urge the Chancellor to end this inequity and to place the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service on the same footing as every other fire service in the UK, which is not subject to that that is unable to be reclaimed. I urge the Chancellor to take the opportunity of his autumn statement to do right by our front-line fire fighters. To ask the Scottish Government what workforce planning and recruitment plans are in place for the police and fire and rescue services in remote and rural areas. Workforce planning and recruitment are rightly matters for the chief constable and the chief officer. The Scottish Government continues to support our police and fire service. We are protecting the police resource budget in real terms in every year of this Parliament, a boost of £100 million by 2021. We are providing additional police reform funding of £61 million in 2017-18. We have also increased overall operational budget for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service this year by £21.7 million to support investment in equipment and resources. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. What support can the Scottish Government give remote and rural areas to roll-out programmes such as the uniform services programme at Galsby high school for recruitment to emergency services as an issue? Will he come and pay them a visit? Cabinet secretary, I do very much welcome the initiative that has been taken forward at Galsby high school. I know that our police and fire service work very closely with a number of youth-based organisations in order to help to support and promote the work that our uniform emergency services carry out on a daily basis to protect our communities. I am keen to make sure that we continue to develop that partnership between the police and also our fire service. I am certainly more than happy to consider any invitation that I receive in order to visit this particular initiative at Galsby high school. According to figures collected by the Fire Brigades Union, the number of fire safety officers and inspectors has fallen from 102 in 2013 to 90 in 2017, a 12 per cent drop in four years. Can the cabinet secretary give his chamber assurances that he plans to reverse that trend? The way in which the staffing complement is configured within the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is a matter for the chief officer. Thank you very much. That concludes portfolio questions. There will be a short pause where we move on to the next item. I apologise to Emma Harper and Donald Cameron for his questions that I did not reach this time.


Good afternoon everybody. So my name is Mathias. I'm working with Ben at Armo which is a security startup specialized in communities scanning and handling and yeah today we will talk about Sec Comp. So I will I have like a few points to introduce what it is and then we are really doing this conference to get feedback from users whether you know it and if you know it if you use it and if not trying to understand if it makes sense to implement some capabilities into Cubescape or just if nobody cares. So what is Sec Comp? So Sec Comp is a feature of the Linux kernel since 2.16 something like this. So very old and it enables to block Syscalls from the user space to the kernel space. So you can also configure it to just create warnings but usually we want to block it. So why is it good to use Sec Comp? Well you can protect your kernel from malicious apps because let's face it the Linux kernel has like dozens of Syscalls and few of them are used by everybody and then they are like all those special management ones that are never used and since they are never used they have issues and people can abuse them. So usually it's a good idea to restrict them and it's mostly harmless for most of the applications. So who learned about Sec Comp for the first time right now? Did everyone know about it before? Okay there are a few hands so that's good. So somewhere we have done something good that people learned Sec Comp for the first time today so that's great and it's been one of the main things in terms of isolation for containers. So it's a really important topic and I hope we can... Yeah it's not only from containers I mean usually it's for regular processes and containers are special cases of processes. So now if I can circle back to Kubernetes, so Sec Comp has been available since 119 which means more than three years ago it was August 2020 and we haven't seen that much of an adoption. So usually what you have available is like few built-in profiles that are available in Kubernetes like mostly the default one and there is also the unrestricted one which is not a profile and when you create your pods yeah you can apply these profiles to your application but the default one is like way too general. So what is good is usually to write your own profile but then you run into like problems of how do I take this configuration which is a Linux configuration into all my nodes how do I like synchronize and distribute these profiles and Kubernetes doesn't provide any mechanism for this. So maybe that's why people are not using it but that's all I had for like an introduction now I would like to know if any of you is using Sec Comp in Kubernetes. Okay you want to talk more? I can come over there if possible if not. We're using it a little I think it's the mandate now is you have to have the runtime default but we're not making our own and I don't even know how to make our own in our current environment. Okay are you using like a plain Kubernetes or like a special distribution like OpenShift or EKS? Okay great. Yeah just to continue on that topic I remember there was a feature added called Sec Comp default and by default it wasn't enabled in Kubernetes so then there were three different profiles that were created which were sort of built in in some ways and runtime default was the default for the default Sec Comp feature and that's been available for the last few widgets for folks to use I think you're probably using one of that and there are some there is some very good Kubernetes documentation and some blogs where people have said like if you want to create your own Sec Comp profile how you could do it and when would that be useful versus using runtime default so that's something to maybe look at and consider later on. Any other questions or maybe why people haven't used Sec Comp? Okay you have more to talk. So we've started to roll it out in small like places the one where we're like nervous about is like how or yes how do we like know you know we make this change and apps start failing or failing more than usual that the cause is like this change mostly because like not there's a lot of stuff going on in non-prod and a lot of things are just broken by default so it's hard to tell like this is my fault or is it somebody else's fault so what's kind of like the recommended way to check for that. So yeah good question I don't think you can start Sec Comp in just warning mode by default in Kubernetes I'm not sure about this so that would be one solution but what we had in mind actually with Cubescape is to put some instrumentation and check and list all the C scores that an application is doing during a normal workload processing and then gather this list and help you define profiles help you distribute those profiles and then enable for the pod so we wanted to make it like more in an automated way but it's it's a lot of work and I don't know if people are interested into this because how I see it it would be nice to have the probes deployed in development you run all your test in in development and then you generate profiles and you distribute profiles in your testing and production environment so that you're not mixing them and yeah that's how we wanted to do it. So the assumption here looks like is the dev is actually equivalent to production and whatever you learn is probably going to match with production I don't know how much is it true for how many of us that development environment matches production so that can be one of the challenges I have one more question. Great and I'm actually going to answer your question because we did a bunch of digging and research looking at this not specifically with Kubernetes workloads but with more general Linux applications and you know using them to do things and 99% of the time roughly you will stay within the common things you saw in your testing or your other environmental runs but what that means is your application breaks all the time. If you want to use it for logging or something like that it's fairly useful but there are enough corner cases related to weird stuff that happens in situations with timing with some error handling case getting triggered with other stuff like this that you'll I think very quickly run into problems or you'll be extra permissive and if you're extra permissive then you're not doing yourself a service. I'll go to him first and then you. Yeah I mean that's the same with network policies right when you write network policies you're based on like a default workload and once you apply them you don't know if you need to add more because you don't see when they are blocked because the traffic that doesn't exist you don't see and it's the same with syscalls so yeah actually there's no good answer for that yeah yeah I think it's I want to add on to that because I totally agree in the sense that I think it has to do with the fact that it is a syscall level policy and I think that like something like a network policy I think is more easily kind of you kind of understand what like network calls your um parents try and make but almost every app now is written in a high level language like very few people are writing C and directly calling Linux syscalls um and like for example like I pulled up the container D like default runtime profile and you see like a ton of syscalls that are like allowed and then everything else is disallowed for example and like some of these like you've never heard of them uh because you know like you said earlier there's so many Linux syscalls out there uh and I think just like the difficulty of working at a syscall level like profiling is very difficult and um like I said earlier uh you know going through every case like testing is a difficult problem profiling is a difficult problem and I think that's like one of the big things that's just an issue with any syscall based system uh not just seccomp so I think we have to figure out like I think just if there's a better way to profile things and just kind of be reasonably certain that it's not going to break things in a weird way more people will be willing to use it I think very well made points uh I'll come back to the gentleman at the back this is really just more of a comment so uh for our given use case we were looking at seccomp for runtime and what we found is whenever that was turned up with policy we just had unexpected application behavior and our um what we believed was happening is that underlying error handling that is not part of seccomp basically was in conflict with the unexpected behavior of not receiving a system call return so when so just a recommendation for anyone who is looking at this is to start with observability first put it in turn it on for logging see what the environment is doing be cognizant of the error handling that occurs around whether it be uh well just error handling in general because that is probably going to be the one of the largest conflicts in in reasons why your application has unexpected behavior so once you have observability then start to introduce policy in a step-by-step basis whether it be uh you know group it together by function or or um you know related to how your application is working any other thoughts okay I see one so as much as like the narrow allow list is nicer for truly least privileged the other option is like just denying known dangerous calls or limiting things like you haven't tested like and I guess a related question there is I'm actually kind of curious how consistent some of the default policies are because I think there's some variance like is IOU ring allowed in policies or not it notoriously also doesn't create compatibility.com but some policies allow it and some don't such as I think Docker for example disallows it allows it in the default policy but the podman set does I suspect that's used by cryo also I'm curious like is there consistency there or people using it to disable IOU ring out of caution like google us now yeah and I think some of the environments anyone want to share experiences about IOU ring I think it is probably worth to take a step back for folks new to seccom what runtime default is and how kubernetes works with container runtimes and how are we inheriting the seccom policies from the container runtimes anyone want to try and answer that there's you can also answer of course yeah the answer is I don't know I should know because I'm working in the kubelet most of my free time can you just yeah passing the mic because it's recorded so yeah so the two questions there is I don't know are they consistent this would be the first question which is some risk to like are you writing a generic open source app you want to run on all runtimes of generic clusters you want to you want to fit in the common defaults so that would be like I don't know is the ecosystem consistent because I know there's a there is at least some variance in some of the runtimes and then the separate question was yeah I'm just curious if people are using it what what kinds of this calls are people frequently like out of caution disabling I I can share I can share some history that I know and folks in watching the recording or in the meeting room can correct me from what I remember docker was one of the first container runtimes that became popular and the second filters that they developed were tested across multiple containers in docker hub and the idea was if those containers are not failing there is a good chance that the default profile is good enough and then eventually as uh Kubernetes became more and more popular there were more container runtimes uh container d cryo and then there was a container runtime interface uh that also was created so today how Kubernetes kind of interacts with all of them is Kubernetes in itself uh when you say runtime default it's going to identify the container runtime that we are using on the worker nodes so for like a quick summary of Kubernetes architecture very high level there is a component called kubelet that works runs on every worker node and that's kind of like a local agent for Kubernetes API server and all the schedulers and controllers kubelet will talk to any container and time that is available where they are able to understand each other and based on that when kubelet gets a request saying I want to create a pod kubelet will talk to container runtime and say like okay I want to create a pod which has this container I know you can start containers and create ones please do it so in theory and I might probably got some things wrong happy to for folks to correct me this is how it works and when the container is actually going to spun up as a process that's when it will know which uh second profile is listed in the container runtime and then as the container gets started as a process it inherits that profile and says okay I'm only allowed these calls and everything else I'm not allowed so that's basically how the whole kubelet container runtime second default things work to your question about like whether it's consistent across run times probably not and that is another thing to consider as an as somebody who manages clusters is if I'm gonna change my Kubernetes underlying infrastructure is my container runtime changing and if it's changing there is potentially unknown behavior that could happen in applications and maybe once this call that you assume was blocked is not blocked anymore and then there is possible exploit that was not possible before which is not possible so lots lots to think about but for folks who are new I just wanted to give some context so we can kind of go at the same level and go from there any any other thoughts questions is container based or node based yeah I think you you answered it right if I remember right you specific you pick the name of a policy per node per container in the pod spec but the actual JSON of the policy is typically installed on disk because it's part of the the runtime configuration so each node needs to have the configuration installed on it which one of the things you mentioned is you need to distribute this policy to all your nodes or part of updates or part of node installation but yes run time when you schedule your pods or deploy them you need to you need to pick from the list you've already installed which is tricky create a profile which only control which sees call my container can access okay there's a default policy by default which usually there's a default policy by default which most of them look close to what docker started using a long time ago even though you're not using docker likely which allows a pretty broad safe supposedly list of things that denies some definitely privileged things but yes you can write your own least privilege narrow policy if you'd like or add things back that are missing from the docker policy like I think notably when I ran into personally was um I believe I was trying to use username spaces inside of a container and the docker the defaults I got policies were disallowing it and I had to add it taking too much time if this is the this is the case since our company use commercial runtime uh monitoring we use uh polo auto twist lock and it's expensive um we also go open source um I I have investigated Falko sponsored by sysdick it is open source and we also try to come up with the uh second profile I just do a very brief investigation and I found out it's because we are cloud provider um outage is is we have to pay a customer if there is outage it is impossible for us to train the container and generate the profile so this I come up with idea I hope um you guys can give me an answer is that possible that the open source uh sponsor can provide some simple profile from the container for example we at the first beginning we only want to continue not run in privileged mode not uh run in the host process ID and not have um privilege escalation privilege so if um you guys can provide us profile which just prevent these options we can first enforce um these kinds of control and later we can add more and more um anyone want to take that okay cool uh I'll just summarize for everyone uh there are different ways to control and isolate containers uh not running as privilege not allowing to escalate to privilege not running as with host network host team space and stuff like that is there a way to control that and also then use sec comp as an additional control so just in response to that comment that's kind of where we um where we are right now is where we have divested kind of the runtime control likes that comp which actually does this call intercept we're investigating the use of falco just to have observability so that we can have minimally enumerate any given application what it's actually calling um and we can use falco in conjunction with other terms to do kind of remediation after the fact should a malicious sis call come through however that doesn't offer you kind of the preventative control that some commercial carriers need in their instances but in development that's a good strategy to have is to again use something like falco to have observability first so that you enumerate out all of your given sis calls for an application second start with your sec comp default profiles just to see if it breaks uh you know uh kills containers creates abnormal application behavior and then slowly introduce policy on top of that actually that's that's exactly what we had in mind uh into keepscape except we don't use falco use a inspector gadget but it's the same um i was maybe first the question then i i was actually just gonna mention inspector gadget um so we're using that um and i guess caveat we haven't turned on the sec comp feature yet we're using it for network policies right now um but the idea is that inspector gadget it's open sourced on github and it runs as a daemon set everywhere and then it will just silently collect like traces since for us it's connecting network traces um and then at any given moment you can just ask it like hey you know i want you to generate me a network policy um you know if you're like this long ago or just based on whatever trace you see for these different labels um and it will do that for you will make you like a kubernetes network policy that you can then just take and do qtl apply or whatever um and so it has a mode for that for sec comp um and i guess part of why i'm here is to have to learn what would happen if i went and turned that on um like what would break or what might i expect from there um but yeah you couldn't maybe use that or we're gonna try to use that um so to have silently tracing like what is any of these containers doing and then in in the future we can go in there and look and say okay that one was doing this i was doing that generate me a sec comp profile to to take with me and then i can either like add or modify or take away or whatever i think that's like uh like profiling is a very powerful feature of course but i think um the biggest issue is just like 99% of the time ideally like your application is running well it's running as expected nothing weird's going on but like that one percent of the time where you have errors or you have like weird paths being taken is super important and and if you have um you know like you turn on sec comp based on some profile you did for a month of like you know a good performing application all of a sudden it gets an error and then it can't like you know do any error mediation logging whatever you want to do there like that would be a very serious issue so you'd have to be like very certain that you've tested like thoroughly before you can like be confident in that profile and i think that lack of confidence is one of the big things that like slows down at um slows down an option of sec comp yes you have to choose either be resilient or be secure one of the things to consider to consider too is the ability of your application to auto scale or for air recovery the more resilient your application is the more you can't the more enforcement you can have in your sec comp policy however if your application that isn't resilient if it's kind of more in the pets versus the cow then you know you should really be having a very uh a very light sec comp policy i also had one question from developer experience perspective when i've seen sec comp blocking something for my application i get a very unuseful error something like operation not permitted or even worse and as a developer it can be hard to know like okay is this something i did in my application is this something in the cluster is it the runtime that's giving me problem any ideas from people working on this and using it in terms of how to help developers know this is not you this is cluster managers or you need to go to talk to kubernetes admins any ideas or experiences okay and he has one cheers it's a bit of a complex problem because the point of sec comp is to block those sys calls in the kernel so passing information back into user space is potentially or considered originally potentially leaking data um there is something from christian browner who's one of the canonical guys who's done a lot of work around this called the sec comp notifier so it's a way of kind of getting an out of band actual response back from the what might be a segfold sometimes for uh for the kernel um but yeah it's kind of intentionally opaque and it's really not a very nice feature for a user um yeah sorry that's not a very productive answer yeah i mean it's it's fair in some ways like there is a good rationale for both so that makes sense any thoughts anything else anyone wants to share yeah maybe yeah uh i wanted to say there are also other ways of blocking sys calls like if if you take the the approach that google had when they started the g visor for instance they they intercept sys calls not at the kernel level but as between userland and kernel land i don't know if it's more effective it definitely has an impact on performance but uh yeah i don't know if anyone is using other solutions to block sys calls so that was my question yet to putting those in prod but yeah the other thing i'd compare g visor to is actually just using a vm base solution which sometimes quite difficult in cloud with some of them disabling nested hypervisors but um yeah kata containers in many ways i would actually compare to g visor more than anything else and they're different trade-offs yeah my understanding is g visor has overhead for sure but it is lower fixed overhead so if you like it doesn't require tons of memory and things like everything's a little bit slower but it doesn't have tons of overhead whereas a vm has a moderate fixed overhead but it's actually quite efficient once it's running as opposed to stack op which is mostly free because it's already in the kernel but it has limitations uh actually since the g visor was mentioned i'm curious uh from the monitoring and tracing standpoint for example if you're using ebpf for like stack tracing and g visor intercepts the call what actually you will see through the entire stack what will be in the ebpf because g visor is essentially fakes the call and fakes the interception on both level it's in user space in this kernel space as far as i understand so i'm just curious if anybody tried to run ebpf along with g visor or any other tracer of the syscalls and how the entire stack will look like i haven't performed that specific test but my understanding is is that the emulation of those syscalls is actually done with a really small subset of total syscalls well that that's the set that they emulate but i think there's um there's a diagram that i can't it's on their website somewhere it's probably also worth saying that um google rolling back g visor because they they had it around a cloud run because cloud run was originally running on borg and they were like well see it's not safe enough to expose to users for Linux kernels not sufficient for our use um which is why they rewrote it but then they've been just weird edge cases and uh certainly the i think cloud run v3 is the latest incarnation that they're doing it just doesn't use g visor so that on the one hand but the other is there's a triangle graphic on their website somewhere which shows the number of syscalls they support and then the ones they actually go down to from an actual system called level and it's not very many so i think you'd see very confusing traces because they wouldn't map um yeah again immediately helpful answer but perhaps not we got about couple minutes more uh i kind of want to end it on a non secomp note so do you answer your question right secomp is one of the many ways we can continue to isolate containers and parts in our cluster i think three of the things that you mentioned are already good ones that we can continue to use so i think that is always important to consider in perspective like yes definitely use secomp it's helpful it does a lot but there is to your question like have you played around with the recent port security standards that were made part of the cluster before i think in 125 and plus yeah so that would be something of something what you are looking for where it has three built-in standards in as part of the cluster that do all the three things that you mentioned and then and some more and they're based on different granularities there is a seccom field also to do the things that we all discussed and that is something easy to kind of do on your laptop and just see if your application works it starts with privileged baseline and restricted i think baseline is a decent start with enough good enough depending on your risk posture so that's where i would say like we can end like yes secomp is great we should continue to explore and push the boundaries to make it better and in some future world when you give a yamal of a pod it automatically generates a seccom profile for all of us and that would be wonderful but we are not there yet so with that


The long-awaited Samsung Galaxy S8 has arrived at Appalachian Wireless. Get yours for the introductory price of just $149.99 with a two-year service agreement. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless, an East Kentucky network company. Justin Hilton knows a good thing when he sees it. That's why the rising eighth grader currently on vacation from Jenkins Middle High School shows up every day at the Dunham Park for lunch. I mean, the food's terrific. The food Justin enjoys is prepared by the school district's food service workers. They take the meals on the road as part of the district's summer feeding program, stopping at three locations in and around Jenkins to distribute food to kids. I got nothing else to do to start my morning, so I just come out here and eat with them. The program is in its very first year of mobile distribution. When food's given out, it could easily be mistaken for a picnic, but there's a noble mission behind it. You worry about some of your children during the year, during the summer months because you see them all year, you get attached, you hear some of their stories, and it's just a good feeling. And I thought what I said, it's about kids. It's not about low income, it's about any child. You know, getting a meal, getting a free meal during the day that may otherwise, by whatever reason, may not have access to water. Jenkins School food service director Susan Baker said kids wanting to eat need not be students in the Jenkins Independent School System. The program is open to anyone under 18. It's open to any child, 18 and under, it don't have to be a student with the Jenkins Independent School District, it can be any child.  Like we were saying, if a grandparent has their grandkids here from Ohio, you know, they're welcome. And Baker hopes more kids will come out and break bread with her and her staff. The more I think word is getting out, the better we're seeing a progression in numbers and that's what we want. The Jenkins Summer Feeding Program operates Monday through Friday with stops at these times and locations. Proof of income, residency or enrollment is not required, just an appetite for good food. In Jenkins, Chris Anderson, EKB News.


Taking away the narcissist fuel. Taking away their supply. Taking away their power to affect you. To do this, you must reinforce your boundaries.  The narcissist might not be in your life anymore. And while many would be sad during this time, you need to see it as something that is beneficial for you. Something to be grateful for. You need to see it as though it is for your protection, whether you left the narcissist or the narcissist left you. It is a blessing in disguise. It is an apparent misfortune that eventually has good results. It seems bad or unlucky at first, but it results in something good happening later. It all depends on how you see it. That determines what effect you will get from it. You're seeing it as a loss when it is not a loss. You have not lost something of value. Losing them is a good thing. It's an advantage because they were not bringing anything of value to you. They were only taking value away from you. You've just developed this mindset that you were not good enough or that you could have done more. Maybe you could have done something differently and had a different outcome. This will dominate your thoughts unless you put your attention on something else. Instead of thinking about what you could have had with them, you need to think about what you never had with them, what you should have had from the start. If you are unlimited to no contact with a narcissist, you need to start reinforcing your boundaries. You may want to argue with them. You may want to tell them how you feel and they will provoke you into arguing with them because then at least you're still engaged with them. It shows that you still care about what they did to you. It's given them fuel. You shouldn't try to work things out fairly with a narcissist. They're not fair to you.  When you're trying to work things out with them and you're trying to make a plan of how it's going to go, you're just wasting your time. That doesn't work with narcissists. You can show respect and decency to a respectable, decent person, but not to a narcissist. That will only put you in an even more difficult and unpleasant situation. You're not dealing with a normal person so it cannot be resolved in a normal way. There isn't going to be a mutual understanding. You'll be left with an unfairable outcome or result. Social norms tell us how we are supposed to treat each other and how we should be kind and decent, but then most of society and the people in these positions of power are not aware or concerned with how harmful these narcissists are. They don't care about how these narcissists are destroying people's lives and that is why you have to make your own decisions. You have to do what is best for you. Forget about what people think. Forget about society. They don't have to live your life. They don't have to deal with these people. They don't have to deal with the effects of being around them. So forget about what they think. It's your life and you need to be in control of it. You need to be the one making the decisions.  You can't worry about what people are going to think. You have to take the matter into your own hands and make your own decisions. Even when you've taken the narcissist fuel it doesn't mean that you should still engage with them. You shouldn't be giving them a lifeline. You shouldn't have any hope of things getting better. You shouldn't have an expectation or desire for a particular thing to happen. When you have any hope of them changing you are still giving them your attention. You are still giving them your energy. You are still giving them control over your emotions. You trust and believe in them. You rely on them. If you are doing all of this without even being around them you are giving them your energy and that still fuels them. When you are thinking about them when you are hurting over them you are giving them energy where your attention goes. Energy flows. And your energy is their fuel. There's a part of you that just wishes they were normal. You have cognitive dissonance. Two conflicting beliefs. You don't want to accept the truth and reality of the situation. You don't want to accept what you've had to experience with them. Some of you still care about the narcissist.  You cannot love a narcissist. You cannot love someone who doesn't love themselves. And while the narcissist may portray an image of excessive pride or admiration in their own appearance or achievements the truth is they actually hate themselves. And this false image of self appreciation is actually just a coping and defence mechanism for how they really feel about themselves. They don't love themselves. They don't see the value in who they really are. So how could they ever see the value in you? You should not value someone who cannot see your value just as you should not love someone who cannot love you. It's an unfair trade and you are left receiving less than you're given out. Which gradually deteriorates you over time. They don't even know what love is. Your idea of love is very different from their idea of love. What you value and what is important to you is not valuable or important to them. You're very different. There's nothing that you really share. There's not enough things that you both value. There's not enough things that you both have in common that is what you might consider to be love. Because love really is about acceptance. Acceptance is about having an agreement or a belief in an idea or explanation. When all you ever do with them is argue or disagree they're always in opposition to you because there aren't enough things that you both value. There aren't enough things that you both have in common. So how could you ever love them? You think that you love them but that's just the programming. That's from the love-bombing phase. You need to be more aware of what you're dealing with. You need to constantly remind yourself feeling sorry for them is not going to help you. Being kind isn't going to help. They're just going to take your kindness for weakness. They're only going to take advantage of you. They display fake emotions. So when you're interacting with them you need to be fake, just like them. Because everything that they're giving to you is fake.  Take away their supply. Take away the attention and admiration. The assistance and cooperation. Money, sex, whatever you're giving to them, whatever they're benefiting from, cut it off. And you will see just how much love they had for you. Focus on self-care and self-development. That will strengthen you for the future. Whatever you do, some people will not like it. It is not possible to satisfy everyone. Someone will always complain, will be displeased no matter what you do. Some people are just miserable and nothing will make them happy. But this is your life. And you are responsible for your life. Along with your mind, body and soul. So you must make the decisions that are best for you. Because no one else is going to do it. No one else is going to put you first. You have to do it for yourself. If you're no good for yourself. If you're not in good shape physically or mentally, you're not going to be good for anyone else. Sometimes you have to be selfish. Sometimes you have to be concerned with your own wishes or needs. You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else. You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of anyone else. Attend to your needs first before you worry about anyone else. And then you will be in much better shape to attend to other people. Thank you for watching. I hope this video resonated with you. Please like, comment, share and subscribe. Click the bell icon to receive notifications for my future videos. If you're lighter than me, my PayPal link is in the video description. Coaching inquiries, you can email me at nagsforvecoaching.com. Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon.


Hello everyone. Welcome to this session. I am Priyanka Bansore and today we are going to learn about introduction of business ethics. These are the learning outcomes of this video lecture. At the end of this session students will be able to first explain ethics and basic definition of business ethics, then describe the relationship between business ethics and the law and the third one distinguish between ethics, morality and the ethical theory. These are the contents of this video lecture. Specifically, we will be concentrating on these points. Before moving towards to the introduction of business ethics pause this video for few seconds and you have to think and write what is ethics actually. Now pause the video and you have to write down the answer. So, ethics is nothing but it is a moral philosophy or code of morals practiced by a person or group of people. The word ethics is derived from Greek word. So, it is a Greek word that is nothing but ethos which refers to a character, then guiding beliefs, then standards or ideas that spread through a group, community or we can say through the people. So, all individuals are accountable to their community for their behavior. Then the community can exist in the form of like neighborhood, profession, city, state etc. So, ethics is the branch of philosophy which is concerned with the principles of behavior that distinguishes between right from the wrong. So, that is nothing but ethics separate out the good and bad, then right and wrong things, then which is the fair and which is unfair, then again it differentiate between moral immoral. So, ethics separate out these things. So, in short ethics means a code of conduct. It tells a person how to behave with another person. So, before moving towards business ethics let us see first what is the business. So, generally when we understand by business we understand for profit organization right. So, actually business is doing for getting the maximum profit. Then what is profit organization? So, a for profit organization is one which takes in resources in different forms and then move it through the process within the organization to generate outcome which yields the profit. So, this is nothing but this is the about the profit organization. Now, we will see what is business ethics. So, already we have seen the ethics, now we will see the what is business ethics. So, business ethics refers to the application of the ethics to the business. So, to be more specific business ethics is the study of good and evil, then right and wrong and just unjust actions of businessmen in the world of business. So, in short it is the study of business situations, activities, decisions where issues of right and wrong are addressed. So, what constitutes right and wrong behavior in business. So, it is determined by the public interest groups, then business organizations as well as the individuals moral values and the principles. Therefore, these standards are mean to govern the conduct of the business person. Now, we will see the relation between the business ethics and the law. So, here in this figure you can see one of the area is ethics and the another area is law and this common area between them or you can say the area is overlap between ethics and the law which is referred as a gray area, this is known as the gray area, okay. So, business ethics in terms of issues of right and wrong, one might quite naturally question whether this is in any way distinct from the law. Surely the law is also about issues of right and wrong, this is true and there is considerable overlap between ethics and the law. In fact, the law is essentially codification of ethics into the specific social rules and regulations. So, the best way of thinking about the ethics and the law is in terms of two intersecting domains, right. So, the law might be of minimum acceptable standards of the behavior. The law does not explicitly cover every possible ethical issue in business or you can say outside of the business, right. So, similarly it is possible to think of issues that are covered by the law but which are not really about the ethics. In one sense you can say the business ethics can be said to begin where the law aims. Therefore, business ethics is primarily concerned with those issues not covered by the law or where there is no definite agreement on whether something is right or wrong. We will see the relationship between morality, ethics and ethical theory, okay. So, here when we are going to study the business ethics, first of all we have to know three other terms that are morality, ethics and the ethical theory, okay. So, before we continue it is important for us to sort out some of the terminology we are using. So, in common uses the terms ethics and morality are often used interchangeably. However, in order to clarify certain arguments many academic writers have proposed clear differences between the two terms, okay. So, we do agree that there are certain advantages in making a distinction between ethics and morality. Now, we will see actual definitions of morality, ethics and the ethical theory. So, morality is concerned with the norms, values and beliefs that are embedded in social processes which define right and wrong for an individual person or a community or a group. Now, we see the ethics. So, ethics is concerned with the study of morality and the application of reason to elucidate means you have to explain clearly the specific rules, principles and that determine morality acceptable courses of action. So, ethical theories are the codifications of these rules and the principles. According to figure or we can say this is the way of thinking morality precedes ethics and ethics precedes the ethical theory. So, all individuals and communities have morality, a basic sense of right or wrong in relation to particular activities. Ethics represents an attempt to systemize and rationalize morality typically in normative rules that suppose offer a solution to these situations of moral uncertainty. So, these the outcomes of the codification of these rules are ethical theories such as right theory or the justice theory. So, it is important at this stage to recognize that ethics is about some form of rationalization of morality. Now, there are some ethical tips for organizations and managers. So, first develop a code of ethics for the organizations and make ethical performance a strategic priority. Then second say it some good examples as per need. Then third one create open lines for communication, then engage the communicate and train your staff. Fourth one educate employees and provide support routes for staff. And the last treat ethics as a process and so that major effectiveness of your ethics program. These are the references of this video lecture. So, from this book also you can understand the concept of business ethics very nicely. Thank you.