session, and we will also host a few more sessions like today in the future just to make sure that we incorporate the voices from different thinkers and also wider civil society organizations on the ground. And so the output of this session, we will incorporate the output into an invitation to the wider society to talk about different ideas for the future and how we get there. And so this way, we can move towards or beyond recovery and renewal towards a fair and just society. So I have, because there are so many people are interested in joining today's session, so we don't have much time to introduce each one, but I still want to make sure that we hear from everyone. So just for everyone, I have put down the table where we're sitting and also your name, your role, and why you're relevant to radical civics because of the work that you are doing. So feel free to just look at different people in the room, and can we just hear briefly from each of you just your name and your expectation of today, like what you want to get out of today? Just really briefly, it doesn't need to be long. So should we start from Jonathan? We can. Wait, can you hear me? Yes. OK, I was wondering if I was on mute. So for many years, I've been really interested in the intersection of governance innovation and activism, community organizing. I've had a few experiences working with the city and government, feeling like there was a lot of unnecessary divisions in between the two. Like some people were purposely keeping them separate rather than actively creating the bridges and creating new forms of relating to each other. And in that sense, I've been really inspired by the work of Audrey. And so I'm really excited for us to explore that further today. And I'm helping Fang to facilitate the session, and I'm with Dark Matter Labs. Bon matin, tout mône. Live from Montreal. Thank you, Jonathan. Dimanshu, do you want to go next? Yeah, I can go next. Hi, I'm Manchu. I also work with the City Council and work at Dark Matter Labs. And I hold strategic and digital design. And I've also been interested in this intersection of governance and participation and bridging this gap of participation for real democracy that we see exists. And I'm working on a project relating to contracting and how we could use the tools of contracting to further some of this. And yeah, and I'm joining in from Malmo, Sweden. Thank you, Dimanshu. I will just follow my screen and see who is next. So next is Nick. Hi, everybody. I'm Nick from SHIFT, and I'm calling in from London. And yeah, really excited to join you all, see you all. So I think the most kind of resonant and relevant part of this project for me is as we spend a lot of time working in communities on, say, for example, local food systems and find ourselves often very uncomfortably forced to subscribe to a government-based model of service-provided service users or a very market-bound model of which is kind of rooted within some very unequal distribution of kind of the ability to navigate that market. And our work suffers, and our spirit suffers, and I think inhabiting the space that you've been describing is something we seek. And it's very precious when we find it, but it's very under-resourced. It's very difficult to inhabit for very long. And this kind of civic space that isn't reliant on or bound by either of those two models is something we just want to understand better, inhabit more often, and support others to do the same. So yeah, it continued to be very interesting in exploring that with you all. Thank you, Nick. Next, we have Hyo-jung. Hi, I'm Hyo-jung Lee, a visual communication designer at Dark Matter Labs. And I'm focusing on how to visualize, to make people to understand and use the framework as a tool better through the conversation of today. Thank you, Hyo-jung. And next, we have Audrey. Hi, I'm Audrey, a digital minister in charge of social innovation. I'm here today because Fung-Rui invited me to. I'm open to any impossibility. I don't really want to get anything out of this conversation other than to get to know you all. Thank you, Audrey. Next, we have Cassie. Hi, Cassie, are you there? Fung-Cassie wrote in the chat. She's sorry she's only able to type in the chat for now. Oh, right. No worries. Somewhere between Cambridge and London. Cool. Thank you, Cassie. Next, we have Jo-hee. Hello, this is Jo-hee. Also coming from Dakmer Lab, located in Seoul, in South Korea. And my expectation is first of all, interest in how to bring agency to the civil society and let them build their thriving community with the agency of governance. That's one domain perspective, interest and also expectation. And the other one is how to make open a provocation. So that's me. Thank you. Thank you, Jo-hee. Next, we have Gerdan. Hello. I'm also from Dakmer Labs, currently in Delhi, India. And I've seen Audrey give live talks or seen videos. And I'm a big fan. I mean, I can go and let's open that. But I think my expectation and what I'm thinking these days is most about ecological media. And what I mean by that is taking tech and seeing the invisible structures behind it, be it the materiality or be it the extractive models or be it like, yeah. How do we reach more ecological tech? Thank you, Gerdan. And then next, we have Indy. Indy from Dark Matters in London. I'm super excited to be in this room, I suppose. My aspiration is that all my provocation is that I think we're at a moment where certainly in the West, the monopoly of government and the monopoly of private sector are both problematic, certainly in the Western context now. And actually, there is a space for a new radical civics to actually create a new power relationship and which will actually make everyone better. And I'm very interested. And I think Bitcoin is a bad example of a good civic. Anyway, and there might be a really interesting exploration of what that sort of distributed decentralized agency or production starts to create a new type of relationship. And I think this can go from money production. This can go from legals. This can go to all sorts of registries and how do we create a new civic infrastructure of society which creates the multiplicity of public. And I think this moment is right now and I'm super excited to be here to be able to discuss this and see what we can develop together out of that. And I have kind of a bit of an ambition around this, which is I think we should be building something quite radical in partnership with the ordinary around at a global level about building a fund to support this sort of radical capabilities around the world. So anyway, that's my ambition. Thank you, Indy. And I'm from Dacuna Labs and also working with Audrey. I'm really happy to be here and hosting this conversation with Jonathan. And so we are going to explore different strengths of discussion and I will just quickly relate to the work that Audrey is doing and how that intersects with the four different strengths of our inquiry. So the first one is around power distribution and decision-making and sovereignty as a foundation of emancipation. I think Audrey's work around the open source movement and open knowledge like Mondia and the MOE dictionary and a lot of other different, basically Audrey is quite handsome on a lot of civic tech projects. And also another initiative related to what Audrey is working on is the open government mission that invites different stakeholders from all sectors to be able to discuss regulations and policy and come up with solutions together. And I see that as an alternative representation or how liquid democracy can be practiced through a mechanism. For example, like in Taiwan practitioners or like online participators that join assemblies, for example, they are able to represent themselves or delegate their representation to other people who they trust in order to kind of, as opposed to voting for representatives every few years and these are the only people who represent our voices. I see that as a very dynamic way of practicing democratic innovation. So this is definitely the area that we are not going to talk about first. The second one is around radical civic space. So the way maybe it's worth talking about the space at the moment. So we can see like the old framework or this framework from the building triangle that we can see the different, like the separate, I wouldn't say suppression, but just the differentiation between different sectors. And the way if we want to use this framework to point out where the radical civic space is, probably it would be like around here where civic actions is not something that civil society only has to tap in or certain things like state doesn't only have the responsibility to take care of people's welfare and providing public services. Like all the different things are public interest focus, there's a space for that radical civic actions. And then that is a space where the people can make society together. So that's how we see the meaning of radical civic space. So within this strands of inquiry as Audrey in the beginning mentioned that the 1922 SMS is a very good example. Probably I would just give the opportunity for Audrey to mention about that. Cause I find this is very interesting cause in the UK we also have like contact tracing. Like if you go to a shop, you just scan you download app and then you scan then you will be, you will know where you are and then the systems will track everyone's movements for like disease control purposes. But what I find interesting for this example is that the same initiative happen from the perspective of civil society and not only civil society, but also how government and private sectors are working together to realize this space for public goods instead of saying like contact tracing is the purely responsibility of the government or different sectors. So Audrey, do you wanna just jumping and briefly talk about this? Which is very good example of a radical civic space. Well, the unifying value of the 1922 SMS is inclusion, we specifically want to take care of people with feature phones who could not install an app for QR codes scanning. We specifically want to include people who do not have for example, the capacity to use a browser or understand how a browser works and so on. We also want to take care of people who think the line which is equivalent of WhatsApp is the only thing on the phone that they are comfortable with and so on. So the design brief is essentially co-created by the people in the GovZero community over just around 24 hours a weekend and then we converged on the SMS based status. And then in the name of inclusion and name of social norm, then on Monday I work with the five telecom carriers and convince them to waive the fees that's sent to the 1922 SMS. And then of course we then work with the private sector to make sure the five telecoms which are in the private sector are able to delete the SMS after 28 days and make sure that the location code is randomized making sure that the privacy budget is well spent through multi-party computation and so on and the company that built the e-mask system a year ago from us rationing and pre-ordering basically completed the system and rolled it out and work with all the small private sector vendors including nine market stands and so on in another 24 hours. So in three short days, basically the first day the social sector sets the norm. The second day the public sector amplifies the norm and then the third day the private sector implements the norm and then we had a almost perfectly working SMS checking system. The only shortcoming is the roaming service people people who use telecoms other than the domestic ones but we're fixing that tomorrow with an app rollout by a type of municipality. Thank you Audrey. That's really amazing. The last, sorry there's two more. The third strands of inquiries around civic law or soft law we're still trying to find the best language for that which is essentially like talking about laws or stories they're based on our knowledge and behavior and customs and if those behavior are the foundation of like what constitutes law and how we organize together then could we intervene in that space to find the way that we can make law more legible and also more legit the process of making law can be more legitimate and also we can enforce those soft laws through peer to peer feedback. And this is super relevant to also Audrey's contribution in V-Taiwan another project around participatory lawmaking so we will tap into this later on. And last one, not sure if we have time to go into this but essentially this is about the founding mechanisms and how we value things in the space in order to see radical civics happening in a more financially sustainable and environmentally sustainable way. So just to quick wrap up what radical civic is I think we wanna push further the idea of what civil society really means and how people can be participating having the agency and autonomy to make the society no matter who they are from what sector so it's definitely not exclusive domain but quite opposite how we can all work together even we have different backgrounds and so the characteristic of radical civic is really public interest centered, social goal centered and just to mention that the work is supported by the emerging futures fund and we're collaborating on this project with SHIFT.  And fine, I'll just do a little time check in here ideally how much time should we have for this exercise before the collective imagining session? Probably five, five minutes. Okay, sounds good. Okay, so two things, the first thing is that the way that you use the Venn diagram shows that it's a kind of overlapping space between the three sectors but I have in mind a more kind of transcultural or rather with a cross sectoral, transcultural because it's not just about finding the overlap between the three sectors. It's about the three sectors stops being something that people identify with. That is to say I'm not saying that I am a public servant I say I have the experience to work with the government not for the government, right? Instead of saying I am a business person I say I have the experience of working with the market as the one, this is essential because that decouples our identity from our sectoral experiences and I think the Venn diagram sometimes would seem like that one person simply has multiple identities or it's a slash as we say here in Taiwan and so on but I think that is still caught in the identity experience kind of confusion that we have experience in across sectors. It's not that we identify with multiple sectors. That's the first idea that came to my mind. The second idea is around the, there's a specific metaphor, right? That you use that the root. So like being radical is going to the root of things and that inspired me to think about, because I also say radical transparency, right? I'm also a board member of radical exchange. So what really is the root here? And I think one of the values that's shared across all sectors, as I mentioned is this idea of inclusive of the future. And that is to say no matter which sectoral advances are by evolution almost the kind of sectoral exchange modes that we see are able, we're able to include the future, the future generations because the civilization that don't exist for us to see. So there are some roots in those cultures that at least says we don't foreclose the possibilities of our descendants. We need to be at least a good enough ancestor. And I believe that is one of the true roots that could not unify by rather a bridge across the three sectors. I hope that's five minutes. Yeah, definitely feel free to share more. Sorry, I shouldn't put a time cap on that. That's fine, yeah. Yeah, cool. Can I just say two things to that? So when I looked at the crossover, I was almost feeling the radical civics seems to be the base for those three sectors rather than being the crossover. It's almost the foundation. So building civil society is the base of the root for the other sectors. So that's one thing. The second thing was, I'm reading your perspective here on the civic. The civic is not just in space but in time. The kind of thesis of behaving in a civic behavior should not just be the people now but future generations in that model. So I wonder whether we can expand that thesis of civics in space and finalization. I think it's really powerful. That's right, it's shared space time, not just a shared space. Thank you, Indy. Anything else, Audrey? Is there any questions when you read the provocation or is there anything you would like to add if there's anything that we're missing that we should really talk about? Plenty of edits that I would like to make but most of them would be just edits, right? I think the core ideas are sound. Of course, I would prefer if there's less words that connects the ideas together because there's like full quotations to illustrate. So some outlining would help but I don't think there's anything that strikes me as particularly missing. Thank you, Audrey. I think we're still developing the hypothesis and clear our thinking as we go. So definitely there is a lot of room to be improved and we're hoping to continue to develop that, see that as like a collaborative note across many different peoples and to improve that as it goes. So definitely it's not a static thing and we're looking to improve it over time. So last section is about, is the most exciting one which is about imagining the future experiment. We have provide some examples like this one. I came across this when I was working on the street during the weekends and also tell me if it's like ridiculous or there's a lot of room that we can build on top of that imagining that future. So I would just to give an example of like different types of futures that we can see and co-create together. So one example I thought about that could be an experiment on the ground is that imagine if everything is on sale and has sovereignty, so like a land that owns itself instead of paying tax, like currently we pay tax and then the tax will be allocated to like maintain or investing public goods. And instead of doing that, we pay for civic goods through a subscription fee or we could pay for the use of civic goods like pay for the use of a park for example. And we can also crowd found investment through mechanisms like quarterly funding or a convection voting to make certain decisions around where money goes and to use that as a way to vote for the future we like to see. So instead of having a vote or one or two votes every four to five years to elect representatives who will decide on so many things for us. Basically we have the vote like one million or more than that in one year to vote for the future we wanna invest and we wanna see. So everything is self sovereign and we pay and invest in the future we wanna see. So if I want more community allowance in my community I could just like crowd found that or pay for the maintenance of that. The community garden doesn't own by the state or doesn't own by the rich but it owns itself. So there's no issue of like sometimes public goods or like forest would be sell by the government to a developer in order to like build house and that is not really public interest focus and if the city or society is not strong enough to fight back then probably the tragedy will happen in that way. So this is just an example of how a future can look like by passing existing infrastructure and giving up the power to different people and to the people actually. And then when I thought about this experiment so the team have created a framework to organize the different strengths of inquiries as different like different stacks over here. So the one is the first one is around civic law and then here you can see what we want to achieve like different areas of intervention that we can go forward. And then you can see the small dots are like elements of experiments. So for example, peer to peer feedback can be one specific element of a wider experiment. So here you can see I pick up all different elements across different stacks that inspire me to think about this future scenario. So the framework on the left is just almost like a tool or inspiration that help us to imagine the future in a more radical way instead of starting from a blank page. So we also organize a few questions here as a prompt to think about different possibilities of the future. So if we can start from the first run of inquiry and essentially the idea is like we will go through some of the questions we have here is basically this is like the guideline of our conversation but for this session as we go through them, we will build the different experiments for the future that we can conduct in the future. So maybe that's good. Let's go with the first strength and then see how it goes. So the first strength is around power distribution and decision making. So in the age of digital monopoly and power centralization we wanna imagine that imagine if you're in 2050 what would happen to make power distribution possible? Cause we can see like a lot of things are initially set up as decentralized. Like OY web and Bitcoin but we can see the trends of centralization. And so in your view like imagine we're in 2050 what are the pathways forward? What can be the pathways forward? How do we delegate and distribute power fairly? Okay and I'm supposed to what take the cards on the left or on the further left? Do we shuffle and deal seven cards? What are the moves here? So the idea is to feel free to just have a conversation using this as a prompt to start a conversation.  And then your answer is probably starting to is a response to a possibility of the experiment. So probably just like feel free to. Maybe can I suggest something? Yeah. Let's maybe project ourselves in the future maybe 20, 40 if it's far enough and imagine this radical civics where it would go where it would lead and you have all these prompts to help you but if you're already inspired either by the earlier conversations the provocation and so on feel free to start at any moment or at any specific space. Okay. So I'm not required to analyze the scenario through the three strands. It's a support but not absolutely necessary. Okay. See, my work so far has always been about the plurality meaning that I don't try to predict the future. I bring a little bit of the future through myself and through the work with the communities every day but I remain open to the future because I always believe that people in the future are smarter than me. So whatever I do is as materials as assets for people in the future to remix freely and this underlines my practice of creative commons of open source and so on saying basically that whatever I did are not products they're just inspirations and materials of sorts. And so I think in so which is the lowercase see conservative in conservative anarchism to me is just not about pushing the world to what any particular state in 2040 it's about conserving the potential for people in the 2040 who are unimaginably better suited to solve 2040 questions and problems than me to use whatever we did here in 2021 as materials without being burdened by for example copyrights patterns and other existing structure that would foreclose them as the copyrights forecloses useful works for people to use for knowledge and so on. And so that's the basic idea. So if by 2040 people do see that the co-creation makes the intergenerational tension into co-creation and this co-creational spirit is still very much alive and I don't really care really about the specifics of how exactly the re-decentralization takes as well as it's open to the year 2050 and then open to the year 2060. I know this is a very meta narrative but really that's the foundation of what I mean by the root of good enough ancestorship. In your view, what would be if the narrative is about building the materials that can be helpful for people to integrate and evolve how the civil society can look like. What will be the materials like the essentials of those materials look like? Could you give some examples? Sure, so I've previously said that any successful social innovation can be analyzed through the fast, fair and fun pillars and these pillars I think are also important if we are to build a intergenerational view not just problem solving but on civic space in general how we solve everyone's problems by making sure it's everyone's business and not specifically a few person's representatives business. So A inmates to be fast, meaning that we need to be building the public specifically digital but also physical infrastructures that allows the sense making to propagate through the society quickly. That's the collective intelligence strand and needs to be fair, meaning that people who contribute need to understand reciprocity, understand is a commons, understand it's not an extractive relationship and so on and so the fairness as a norm that is also important. But I think even more important than fast or fair is fun. If people find a intrinsic reason to make contributions then what's unfair or what's unfast can be fixed by co-creation. But if people do not get something intrinsic like fun sense of shared joy and so on out of it out of the initial contribution then they could not progress into agenda setting which requires a lot more energy, right? So I think although I said fast, fair fun but probably fun is the most important to optimize earlier on. That's great, great. Anyone want to jump in? I feel like I'm talking too much. Yeah, Audrey, I'd love to sort of in a world where, I mean I was in a conversation where somebody was sort of talking about the scale of trauma some people are facing. And how do we create the space for civil society? When peccarity and actual trauma like real art trauma is on the face of it and how do we, the fun aspect of it is important but somehow there seems to be almost a foundational space of kind of hosting and not hosting but holding the trauma and letting the pain be acknowledged but at the same time being able to move forward into a civil relationship which is also going to be critical because I think we're facing increasingly more divided and traumatized societies and the journey to civility as we're radical civility is going to require something. I would love your thoughts on that space. Yeah, when I say fun I don't just mean the onion which of course it includes the onion but I also mean fun by for example looking at a mirror board and smiling at each other and making self-introduction in a round to a virtual plant in the middle of us. I mean that's fun, right? So in the social work as Pauline's Bapot can only be built when there is a safe space. So mirror Google Meet as we're using now the universal broadband that we're currently enjoying and so on. These are all part of the safe space. These are the material foundations, the enabling condition of the safe space. Now you mentioned Facebook but everybody use Facebook very differently. I use Facebook feed eradicator. I don't even have a Facebook feed. So for me it's just a place for me to search some hashtags and view some videos not unlike any other video platform. And so I'm kind of not harmed by the parasitical authoritarian intelligence that powers Facebook's most revenue streams. And I understand of course that people would naturally want to form town hall like civic conversations on Facebook. But I see it is kind of fundamentally misguided because it's just like holding a real town hall in physical space in a very loud night club filled with smoke. People have to shout to get hurt, addictive drink, private bouncers, you name it. And with all due respect, there is a room for nightlife district in a city. It's just that this room is not the town hall. And so the underlying infrastructure need to have these norms in mind. So either everybody install Facebook feed eradicator or whatever, or we just built public digital infrastructure. And I've greatly appreciate the answer Audrey. And I suppose one question I had and I'll stop off this is that the kind of ideal radical civics. So for example, if property rights were not hosted by the state, but were decentralized and distributed is a transfer of power to what is a traditionally being imagined or money formation wasn't a role of the state was when or civil law and actually these are fundamental redistributions of power from straight to a new type of civil society.  Right. So you cited if I listened correctly kind of Satoshi Nakamoto as a bad example. Did I understand that correctly? Well, for my view, Bitcoin is a disruption of both private and state simultaneously. And I think Bitcoin heralds a different future. And I think civil society, I think there's lots of things potentially challenging about it, the deflation nation, the asset, it will concentrate well and other things, but that's different things that we should just think about, whether that will provide the justice and there's lots of things positive about it. In its form, I think it is a civil form. It is a new form of organizing money production and I think it heralds this, I think it's a herald of a radical civic if you want to define it. And I think governments are struggling to deal with it. You've seen recently China's response to Bitcoin because it disrupts power of money formation and money control in really traditional ways. And I think if we imagine it as a herald, it's a really interesting question about how do we build a new relationship between the radical civic route and government and private sector and other sectors. So that was a nature of the question. Okay. Okay, so to me, Bitcoin still runs on top of the internet protocol. It implements of course some of the norms that we already had in say Cypherpunks and other communities, but it's not the first implementation nor is it the last. It's the first mainstream application, let's call it that. And which is, I guess it makes it a good enough ancestor because first it measurably did inspire more people than any previous distributed ledger implementations. And also Satoshi did not sue anyone for patent infringement. So people are free to do proof of space time, proof of humanity, proof of whatever without getting legal action from Satoshi. And so I would say that Bitcoin fits the description of a good enough ancestor. But as for its radicalness or its specificness, I think it's just one manifestation of the so-called end-to-end principle in the internet. And I think the end-to-end principle which says that innovation can happen as long as two willing people anywhere in the network can send to it. I think that is truly radical as in the route. Bitcoin unleashed some of that promise of the core internet, but there are many more. And to me internet is more radical in a radical civic sense than Bitcoin by orders of magnitude. And the relationship of government to these sort of devices, because I think it was a joke. The PRC did not ban the internet, right? So it means that it was successful in mainstreaming even more stakeholders so that the kind of tolerance of the disruptive potential of future internet applications even very high, but also the incentive for a state to allow its almost parasitical existence is still very high, which is partly why PRC banned, you know, the Bitcoin related websites, but it did not ban GitHub for exactly the same reason. And so I guess the co-creation part, the fun part really of say GitHub or other internet-based open source infrastructure pose a very attractive force for state governments, even authoritarian ones. And at this particular stage, I think they need probably to be symbiotic in order to work with, certainly not for the radical civics. But if we see the radical civics as a symbiotic instead of parasitical force, that already is something, right? It's not something that people do when they get cognitive surplus. This is not something that people do to reform the government. This is something that is symbiotic with the other sectors. Anyone want to jump in? I was wondering about the market's role in appropriating the values created through open source protocols, open source work, and then accumulating the value in profits and private shareholder value. And how, what kind, I mean, do we have examples of material infrastructures that are trying to upend those dynamics so that the value that is created through open networks is sort of kept for the ancestors as open value rather than closed private value? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So systems that are fair to its participants. We do have plenty of these systems. And I see a related question in the chat that says how about, how do Bitcoin evolve basically? And so actually tackling that question leads to answering your question. So the Bitcoin successors tackle that through different consensus schemes, right? Proof of space time as in Filecoin, proof of stake as in Ethereum 2.0, and things like that. And all these are basically redesigning such that it's more fair. Fair for the planet, fair for the external society, fair for up and coming participants in the network instead of dominated by a few persons in the beginning of the revolution, right? And things like that. So in a sense that that's their, not just climate change mitigation and transformation, but also a broader sustainability transformation because without these actions, it would not be sustainable. Meaning that the externalities, negative ones will be so large that the surrounding society and business will start to boycott them as we have seen recently with Bitcoin. And so there's a larger social norm. There's a larger social force here. So how to make sure that these radical civics which show the promise of radical co-creation across sectors remains fair in a wider societal norm. Of course, that means that we need to deliver something that is perceived as more fair to the existing society norm. That is to say it needs to be Pareto improvements. If one makes a innovation that makes it more fair for a few people or a few percentage of people, but reduce the fairness, reduce equity for the other part of the people. I'm not just talking about Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is a good example. Then of course, then it will not be tolerated for a long time by the surrounding society. On the other hand, for example, the crowd-sourced sense-making of air pollution in Taiwan, the digital competence co-creation of the counter disinformation, what we call humor over rumor or making sure there's notice with no takedown but public notice and so on, we can actually tangibly prove that the time you put into it increase the social equity without leaving any particular part behind. And the reason why we can prove that is because Taiwan has as its constitutional core, universal broadband, education, communication as a right to citizens. So it's not just that the state has the responsibility to fulfill the infrastructure, but people expect these to be part of the dignity of citizenship. And so when we introduce such co-creation materials, people do not simply say, oh, what about people with no broadband access? Because people know, well, that's soft on the underlying layer, right? People don't say, what about people who are not part of the universal healthcare? Do they get masquerading? What about immigrant workers? Because on the underlying layer, they are already included in universal healthcare. And importance is not that it's state run. The importance is that it's a fair expectation that's always delivered by the social sector, even when the state through its numerous omissions, for example, forget to recompensate for telemedicine because the IC card was IC card based, right? Then people are prompted to innovate on telemedicine various other ways to kind of augment the existing omissions and by relinquishing their copyright and patents, the state were able then, through presidential hackathon and other means, just make sure that it continues to observe the social norm by delivering part of that infrastructure. So this is a really long run out sentence, but I trust that you understand the main idea. It's Pareto improvement across sectors that not just conform but evolves a social norm that's already upheld by all the sectors related to that particular endeavor. So just one question related to what you mentioned earlier about like the long welfare system like UBI as a foundational enabling condition to support the civic actions in society. I wonder, because you mentioned earlier about everything is included already. I wonder how does that look like and how does that work for those countries that doesn't have those conditions in place? They don't have universal healthcare. So universal healthcare was only introduced after Taiwan's first citizen assembly style deliberation. And but it's in the history books. So people can look it up. And just wanting to be mindful of time, we had an hour, correct? That's right, yes. And Audrey, I know you're really busy. So is it a hard stuff for you at? It's not a particularly hard stuff, but is ST here? I think ST is still here. Yes, yes. So how are you on time? Do you have a hard stuff or can you continue in my absence? Yeah, sure, but I'm not quite sure because I missed the context. Before, yes, so maybe, yeah. Okay, so yeah, maybe I can stay on for another five, 10 minutes. Thank you so much. Wonderful, thank you, Audrey. Jonathan, do you wanna come in and look at any questions that we have to answer? Just to bring to the table before we close? I think I would just let anybody else who has been thinking through this conversation if there's any question or thoughts or ideas or worry about the future of that space. I mean, I suppose I'll sort of keep going until somebody else has another question. So just punch me out of the way. I really enjoy the precision of your words Audrey, I suppose, because in a way, as I hear them, like the space, so the co-creation capability is almost the foundational civic. It's how can you go? That's the basic of civics. And then growing fairness is almost the intentionality who is involved in the co-creational capability. And it's not, it can never be everyone. So it's the growing capability of that. That's really the issue. Growing in space and in time. So that's actually the kind of vector quality of it. And in time, as I was sort of reconciling what you were saying, you were saying, actually we have to create systems which allow the, for maintaining the potentiality of future generations and conserving their potentiality. So that's the kind of almost the definitional civics that I sort of was able to understand. And then I suppose, one of the things I suppose, and this may be wrong as well, let's have that one as conversation, is what if we were to start to think about money production in that sort of way? What if we were start to say, well actually the current reality is certainly in the UK, very few people have access to justice. You have the idea of justice, but the access to justice no longer exists. So Amazon terms and sheets, it's virtually impossible, but actually the practical. So we know we're increasingly, democracies are struggling to deliver justice. So we have to reinvent the thesis of justice in the 21st century, which allows for a different form of micro-accountability and mechanisms of redress in a new way. And that's going to be different from the institutions that we had. We know that actually our registries that we're about to build, they could be built from a completely different thesis that would make the public and pluralize the public rather than centralize the public. So the plurality of publics. So there feels like a moment of radical institutional reform that could actually empower building this radical civic base and allow government to have new integrity in that process as well. Do you feel the hypothesis we're running is valid? That's a kind of a generic hypothesis. Yeah. It's valid and we're, of course, in the middle of the great accelerator for that, right? The twin dynamics that affects the humanity with the same urgency and therefore allows people to find common topics across time zones. Prior to this, it was not possible. So I could talk about the weather but it would not make sense for you. But if I talk about SMS checking, you know, suddenly it resonates. So I think the capacity for co-creation is dependent on the urgency. And because of the sheer urgency that we have now, I think the demos over them, right? The power of democracy over the pandemic and infodemic is felt in the same urgency in pretty much all the democratic policies. And that creates a remarkably, that the word I like to use is the conflict-free, replicable data type. It's a mass term. It's a term or CRDT. It's a mathematics term. It underlies the Google Doc, the Google Meet, the Mirror Board, right? It's the mathematical infrastructure that allows us to simultaneously make edits and just like Bitcoin, arrive on some consensus that is consistent across fairly trusting parties. And without the CRDTs, most of our time in the battle days in version controlling open source is spent on resolving conflicts, is spent on de-escalation. And if you think about it, de-escalation is what you do if the bit rate of democracy is less than that of conflict. You're basically playing catch up, right? Betch catch up to de-escalate. But if you do have a higher bit rate for co-creation and democracy, then you experience the kind of conflict-free, replicable because of the universal broadband is breast-fast data type. And that, I think, is the foundation for the kind of the radical civic that you just described, because without which, there's no motivation for people to participate in it. And this system does a bootstrap without the initial participation across all the different sectors. Exactly, and just to keep building with that. So one of the things that I think is challenging is too often in many conversations, we tend to look for consensus systems. So whether it's through representation or through voting. And actually consensus systems in complex emerging environments are really problematic because there is no single consensus. It is contextually variant. So co-creation allows for, as you said, this simple end-to-end principle where if two people can agree it, then actually there's a space. That's right. And it deals with the problem of complexity, not through representation or group think or group consensus, but actually through a new form of public accountability through the end-to-end principle with the transparency of process. There's almost a different route of organizing rather than the representational democracy. Which changes them on models of legitimacy from being the vote to being open, transparent, end-to-end principle-oriented. There seems to be a root question that you bring to the table, right? Exactly, exactly. Because in previous literature on deliberative democracy, representativeness is seen as important to legitimacy and therefore you're either obtained through the vote or through the random sortation. Both states back to ancient Greece. However, this way of working is essentially self-selection. People who are interested in former autocracy and explore, but share with the society through open innovation and so on, the internet governance model. But self-selection really is just a kind of lens through which that's the public administration and existing policy infrastructure understand the kind of co-creation we're talking here. In our world, it's called the end-to-end principle, right? It's not called self-selection, yeah. And so if we keep building with it, the integrity of that process, so I remember when we spoke last time when you were talking about why you keep these recordings because it's an integrity principle, right? It allows you to show integrity in terms of anyone can say, well, I did that. That the future is watching, yes. Yeah, exactly. So the governance becomes less about representation and control, but more about integrity and behavior. And actually, not enforcing, but certainly encouraging and feedbacking that integrity and behavior. So there's a new theory of governance that starts to emerge in the system. And the role of government less is about control or representation, but actually integrity, organization and building integrity and system through feedback, not necessarily through control. I think feedback and ennoblement becomes very powerful mechanisms. Can you see, I mean, are you seeing some of that stuff happening in your government leadership for saying? No, definitely, definitely. And I resonate well with the part that says relationship takes the front seat in the radical civics design because indeed relationship lives through our interactions and they are really what we're here for, right? And to call them human capital or whatever, relational capital is kind of a perverse category because they are in a sense the agent here. And then we are just the vehicle through which the agency of relationships happen. And once that view is taken, then you get into much easier co-creation. And this is why I keep saying that the Mandarin word Gongshi or good enough consensus or common understanding really is basically something that's alive, that lives through us. But the English word consensus is too fine. It's just a contract that people find. And so I always modify it as in the internet governance tradition, rough consensus or good enough consensus as I mostly say nowadays. And if we go with your relationships part, it means that the idea of identity is less about me and my certainty but almost a function of the Heideberg uncertainty of relationships, almost a cluster of relationships that allow me to exist that correlate on me. That's right, that's right. Yeah, well, our shared experience, basically this mirror board is alive and we're just, it's tentacles, sorry, vehicles. Exactly. So whereas current thesis on identity always about is a single proof ground truth or the idea of a ground truth or whereas actually what we want to embrace is not ground truth, but your idea of rough consensus of identity in a way, which is a function of multiple relationships correlating around that. And that starts to build a completely different thesis of identity formation. Overlap your relationship, but yes, yes. Okay, because I think these conceptual frames are quite critical because they will underpin how we build some of the root structures that are necessary for this story. Now, I really appreciate it. I'm sorry I'm hogging up so much time and so, guys, thanks for coming. No worries. Unfortunately, I feel like we could have a few hours of this conversation and we're barely scratching the first surface, but we already asked for 10-minute extra, so I feel like we unfortunately have to conclude. So I'll leave it to Fang for the last few words. Yeah, thank you so much for everyone's time and we really appreciate this conversation that is happening right now and feel like we probably should have more time next time or we can have fluid conversation. We'll always feel like that, no matter how many hours. So I think this mural board will just keep open and if anyone wanna add anything to it or raise any questions, I think we will just leave it open and people still can interact on mural. And really sorry that we went over time. Yeah, so I think for the next steps, probably we will just continue to develop the thinking that happens with this and think about the essentials that we can, because we also don't want to just stay in the space of theoretical kind of arguments, but wanting to see how that future can be realized through distributed actions. Like we are really conscious about us, we don't want to be the holder of this conversation, even though we are initiating this, but we want to make sure that there is a space for everyone in the society to be able to tap into the space and develop things further. And so we're still experimenting what will be the best way to keep the different conversations flow and even people from different conversations can have a conversation in a different space. So we'll definitely keep in touch with you. Of course. Well, live long and prosper then. Thank you so much, Audrey, and thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Merci. Should I, just wondering, should I stop the recording here? Yeah. Or do you want to have like before we, okay, let me stop the recording.


Please, please. Please, please. Please, please. Please, please. Please, please. Please, please. Please, please. Please, please. Please, please. Please, please. Your Excellency, we have restricted our movement inside there. So what to do, I think? So just clear us. Just clear the road. Just move back, please. Guys, clear. Clear the way. Open up. Clear the way. Open up. Guys, just clear the road. Don't push anyone. That's it. Dude, calm down. Breathe. Just wait for a chance. Even if you don't make it this far, you're likely to lose some money. Just wait, just wait. Guys, come over here, we'll find the money. tworer, donor, donor. Just wait and see. Not bad, not bad! Look at the Parisians, here, look at the people. Don't put the glasses on! Don't put the glasses on! That's exactly what I was talking about. I'm crying. He is in the president. Look at him! Look at him! Thank you, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, we are here at Ibex Hill Police Station where the former First Lady, Mama Esther Lungwe, has been charged and arrested and has since been detained. I think the lawyers are battling to get a police bond. They will come and brief you about that matter. I am accompanied by Honourable Nakachinda, who is our member of the Central Committee and Chair for Information, leader of the Opposition and Environment, Honourable Brian Munduwine, and members of the Central Committee that are all here. I will invite Honourable Nakachinda to speak first, then I will invite Honourable Munduwine to speak after that. Honourable Nakachinda. Right, this is pure political persecution. We have, unfortunately, in the highest office of the land, a gentleman that is paranoid, desperate, and highly, highly afraid of his own shadow. The sentiment that he has been making publicly, directives that he has been giving and orders to the police, and manifesting in what you clearly can see and professional conduct. We have there, our mother, the former First Lady, who was a victim of having her property stolen. And in the process of wanting to recover, reported to the police, and the police did help to recover, unfortunately, only remnants of what was stolen from her, which was basically money. And there was even a process of sitting, because those people who stole, pleaded saying that as a mother of the nation, having occupied that high office, would want her to exercise mercy and allow us to atone. And then they decided that because of political, you know, manipulation, that has now been turned to suggest that the former First Lady committed a crime, when in fact she was a victim of people stealing from her. It is really shameful that today, just because somebody has convinced himself that his greatest threat for his political future lies in President Edgar Tagualongo. Instead of using wisdom to handle this matter, it looks like God has denied him that virtue. Like so of the Bible, when people began to sing for David, appreciating his work, so allowed his heart to be turned into a heart of darkness. The end result is that the very person who was persecuted, God favored him. This persecution is only attracting the favor of God over President Lungu and his wife, and under Agua Ambiram Patangu, HH, you are courting trouble for nothing. The people of Zambia are going through troubles in terms of the high cost of living and other things. Such cases don't make sense. Allow me to allow lawyers to articulate what I think has happened in there. But from a political point of view, this nonsense will only go to haunt Mr. Akkha in the HLM. Thank you. We have a leader of the opposition in parliament. He was seated with us during the entire process when they gave a warning question and when they proceeded to charge him. Probably speak to those facts and then give your political comments. Yes, I think firstly what was important to note is that the former First Lady responded to police call-out and she came. The warning question statement was recorded. They proceeded to effect an arrest. From there, all we expected was for them to give a bond because it's within her rights. And especially that President Akkha in the HLM has been preaching. The rule of law has been preaching that they will ensure to say for any bondable offense they will give bond within reasonable time. Now, these delaying tactics that you are seeing now are just a confirmation of what most of us feared. Mingalato, which meant abandonment of the rule of law. These police officers are innocent. They are only carrying out a wrong instruction, a bad instruction from the head of state. They know what is right. And that is the reason why even as we engage them, we're engaging them with civility because they're working under very, very difficult situations. So what is pleasing President Akkha in the HLM is to see the former First Lady go in police cells. You are all witnesses to a statement that he made. He said, What they have done now amounts to And if I cut our extra long question, it means President Edgar Longu, because they are one, he's also been held. Now, this is what is giving President Akkha in the HLM some satisfaction, a very temporal, you know, form of satisfaction. I think what President Akkha in the HLM is supposed to focus on is how he's going to change the mindset of the people in Mandevu, who when he said Zambia, they say Dubunga, he needs to work on the formula to change that. Certainly what is happening now here will not change the statement of the people in Karikiriki. Their positions to remain the same. So fellow countrymen and women, this is just the beginning. We are likely to see West off things are not to witness him now because the president has entered a desperate mode. He's now very, very desperate seeing that everything that he said has tend to be the exact opposite. Fuel at 20, 15 Kuwait is now at 30. That's double. Price of minimum at 130 is now 300. Everything is in reverse. So he will resort to these tactics so that you cannot speak, but as an opposition political party and speaking on behalf of honorable members of parliament, we have resolved. We have made one sole mandate taking to the Zambian people that will fight to the hilt to protect the constitution of this country. And within the constitution are enshrined fundamental rights, rights to speak, rights to assemble. It is our job that was given to us by yourselves to go out there and defend you. And part of what I'm doing now is to stand firm and ensure that the democratic tenets of this country are family protected. I will invite Reverend Smiley to speak to the heart of women and the heart of leadership. Before she does that, I know you all want the charges. There are four counts like I stated. So three counts of motorbike effects. This relates to a certificate of title. Remember when they got the money, they went on this shopping spree. So there is a certificate of title they had surrendered during the agreement. So it's those four issues where the former First Lady has been jointly charged with these four other police officers that executed a complaint. Then in relation to her, she has one count where she's been charged for, you know, possession of that $400,000 suspected to be proceeds of crime. So those are the four charges. Are we clear? No, there are four charges, except that she has a more charged $400,000 process of crime. The others is just theft of those three motor vehicles. That's a difficult title. Like we have emphasized there was even a settlement, a settled agreement. But then, you know, the suspects became the victim and reported this criminal complaint to the police. So I invite Reverend Smiley just to speak to the third day where we have the former First Lady locked up here in police cells and denied police bond, even when we had two work insurances. Yes, I want to look into the face of our president, Haka in the each of them. I'm looking into your eyes and I want to remind you of three things. One, you are born of a woman. You were born of a woman. You have a mother. And I'm sure you honor and respect your mother.  And you know how she traversed from north to south, east to west to touch the lives of people. Number two, Mr. Ichilema, you are supposed to respect the Constitution. You saw in front of the people of Zambia, you said you should protect the Constitution of Zambia. And you know that Zambia is a constitutional democracy.  Number three, I want to remind you that the people of Zambia, the people of Zambia have declared this nation a Christian nation where we have heard Christian values and principles. Surely, Mr. President, are you going to be the first one to start breaking our identity? We have an identity. We have a personality to respect and to honor. So I want to remind you of those things, but also allow me as a church leader to speak to my fellow church leaders. We have a responsibility. Church leaders, we have a responsibility. Let us not bury our heads in sand. We have to speak to the situation in the nation. We have to speak on behalf of the voiceless. There is a situation in our nation where Zambia is a peaceful nation, but we are quickly losing this peace that we have gained for so many years. The church leaders should provide the council to the president. Please provide the council. He has to honor our identity as a Christian nation. We are a nation of peace. We are a nation of love. Thank you, Mama. We will take questions before we discuss. Anyone who has any questions? Onigom, you mentioned about the delay in Zambia. Has she made all the conditions? I made all the conditions. I show you to the here. Everybody's here. We've been here since morning. We would have been out of here had they been acting in the process. So what's happening now? What are they waiting for? Somebody's going to make a phone call. President Naka and each of them are to celebrate that madamess along with nine policemen so that the president can smile. We saw the lawyers drive out. What does that mean? Would you believe that after all these preparations, somebody would say he didn't come with their stamp. They could not call a driver from four-side protest to bring a stamp if that's what it was needed? Do you want to do the city excuse like that? I mean it sounds childish. I didn't want to say it, but that's what it is. That's what they are waiting for. No, no, they've driven because the Mr. Yui and the entire team have left this place to go and the collective to get a stamp which they forgot in the morning. And I'm sure you saw me following Mr. Yui to the car. We have a caba, a tribal caba within the police that is being used as an arsenal against the opposition. And whenever they appear, just know that the opposition are in trouble. And they have this dramatic behavior that when they arrest as they have done, because the boss has to be satisfied like the leader of the opposition aside and said they needed to report that at least we have locked her in the cells. That is basically what is going on. I'm not surprised that it's the same police officer that handled cases like this. How many policemen do we have? 20,000. Why is it that it's only the same name against the PM? Check your facts. It's the same name. Mr. Yui has to be somewhere. And the whole is, it's the same people who as long as I've attended this police session, it's the same people. So you know that these are people with instructions. Yes, there are four others. Four others. And the details, the names are there, given the names to your colleagues. Okay, that's, thank you.


The next item of business is a statement by Shona Robison on strengthened fire alarm standards. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of her statement and hence there should be no interventions or interruptions. I call on Shona Robison, cabinet secretary, up to 10 minutes please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The law on fire alarms is changing from the first of February in Scotland and there have been calls for a further delay to this legislation but, having considered the balance of risks, I am clear that it is not right to delay the legislation that is designed to protect and save lives. Ensuring that people are safe from risk of fire in their homes is a key priority for the Scottish Government. Those improved standards will reduce the risk of injury and death in house fires. One death from fire in Scotland's homes is one death too many. Following the tragedy at Grenfell, the Scottish Government carried out a public consultation in 2017 that showed very strong support for a new minimum standard for fire and smoke detectors across all housing, regardless of tenure. That legislation brings all homes to the same standard. For example, it ensures that social rented homes have the same fire safety standards that have been in law for nearly a decade for the private rented sector. It ensures that owner-occupied homes have the same safety standards that new-build homes have had for nearly 15 years. From 1 February, the standard means that all houses should have interlinked alarms with one smoke alarm in the living room, one in each hallway and landing, a heat alarm in the kitchen and a carbon monoxide detector in each room with a carbon-fuelled appliance such as a gas boiler or fire. Those alarms will support greater fire safety and prevent avoidable death. An interlinked alarm means that when one alarm goes off in one part of the house, the rest will go off. That means, for example, that if someone is sleeping in a bedroom away from the kitchen where a fire starts, all the alarms will go off and people are alerted to the danger. Those alarms are very similar to the fire alarms that people will already have, but that important interlinking provides extra safety. Although they can be wired into homes, most are the same as fire alarms that people now have—battery operated, but they can effectively communicate with each other. Figures from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service show that, in 2020-21, there were 44 deaths due to house fires in Scotland. In the four years from 2014-18, where fatalities were recorded, on average 30 per cent of fires started in the living room and 15 per cent in the kitchen. In 52 per cent of domestic fire incidents, a smoke alarm had alerted occupants to the fact that there was a fire giving people a greater chance of escape. Interlinked fire and smoke alarms increased the chance of being alerted more quickly by all going off simultaneously, regardless of where the fire starts. That is why we have introduced the same standards for all properties. We are asking the social rented sector to make this change for their tenants and we know that it has well progressed. We are also asking people who own their own homes to take this step. The Scottish Government has already made over £15 million of loan funding available for social landlords to be cured and to install the necessary alarms that should help to ensure that social tenants are safe in their homes. At an expected average cost of around £220 and sometimes less, I hope that the new fire alarm standards will be viewed as part of on-going improvements for people who own their own homes, one that will protect their property and, importantly, can save lives. I know, however, that people are feeling the cost of living squeezed right now and might feel that they do not have the money available, so I would like to make two points. For those who own their home who are at high risk of fire or who are elderly or disabled, we have provided £1.5 million through the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Care and Pair Scotland to support homeowners to have appropriate alarms fitted. Secondly, it is local authorities who have the duty for ensuring compliance with these standards in the local area. They will be taking a proportionate and measured approach to compliance, taking individual circumstances into account, as well as reflecting the evolving situation with the Covid-19 pandemic. I can be absolutely clear that there are no penalties for non-compliance and no one will be penalised if they need more time, although I strongly encourage all homeowners to make those changes and benefit from the improved protection against loss of life and property in the event of a fire. We have progressed a full awareness-raising campaign through 2021, and COSLA has confirmed that there will be a measured and proportionate approach to compliance as well. Those changes, including the timing of implementation, have been carefully considered and consulted on over a number of years. Following the Grenfell Tower fire, the Scottish Government undertook a review of Scotland's building and fire safety regulatory frameworks.  That consultation went ahead in 2017 with a wide range of respondents. There was very strong support for a common new minimum standard for fire and smoke detectors across all housing. People told us that they were in favour of swift action with a proposed one-year period of introduction of regulations, but in response to specific concerns from stakeholders about the time needed for carrying out the work, ministers agreed that the regulations should allow a period of two years for compliance. The regulations that introduced the new standard were unanimously supported by members of the cross-party local government and communities committee of the Scottish Parliament on 19 December 2018. Those regulations were set in law on 16 January 2019 and were intended to come into force on 1 February 2021. However, in the light of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic during 2020, there were concerns about how the pandemic would impact on homeowner's ability to make changes to their homes in time for the original deadline. A delay of 12 months was sought by ministers and agreed at the local government and communities committee meeting in December 2020. As was stated at that time, a longer delay was not right as any delay to the regulation is a delay to a measure that has the potential to protect lives. That is why we remain committed to bringing in the new standards from 1 February 2022. I hope that I have already provided reassurance to the need for those measures to improve fire safety in all types of home and to protect lives. However, let me also address the other issues that I have heard raised. I am aware of some concerns about the validity of home insurance policies if compliance with the new legislation is not met. We have assured people that that is not the case. We have engaged proactively with the Association of British Insurance throughout the legislative process, and we have ensured that members were aware of the changes. I have stated that, while insurers may ask customers questions about whether the property is fitted with working fire alarms, they are not likely to ask questions about specific standards. Anyone who is unclear on their policy terms and conditions in relation to the new law should speak to their insurer. Public awareness of the changes to those regulations is now high. The Scottish Government ran an intensive awareness media campaign over five weeks in the summer of 2021 across TV, radio and digital platforms. That reached 95 per cent of all adults across Scotland, with 85 per cent of those seeing the campaign at least three times with that vital public information message. In addition, over 96,000 printed leaflets have been supplied to libraries across Scotland, and we have regularly updated our dedicated website with information and advice and distributed an electronic toolkit of resources to key stakeholders. The campaign was shown by independent researchers to have engaged the target audience, driven awareness of the new legislation and encouraged people to take action. Further research carried out in December 2021 showed that 88 per cent of homeowners were aware of the new legislation. We have also made materials available so that MSPs can inform their constituents about the important changes to fire alarms from February this year. I wrote to all MSPs last autumn with further information and frequently asked questions. Following that statement, I intend to write again to all MSPs providing the most up-to-date information to support you in responding to questions from your constituents. That increased level of awareness led to significant public interest in complying with the new standard, which is welcome. I am aware that there have been challenges in meeting the demand exacerbated by global supply shortages of component parts and in the supply of suitable tradespeople to carry out work in people's homes. As of this morning, my officials have confirmed that fire alarms are currently available for purchase and delivery, where the manufacturer has a UK supply chain. Some manufacturers of fire alarms continue to have supply chain issues with imported components, which limit the availability of their alarms for immediate purchase. As I have said before, the legislation makes allowance for the reasonable additional time needed in this situation. In closing, it is really important that I reiterate that, in setting a new standard for fire alarms for homeowners and social landlords, bringing standards in line with other types of homes, our foremost goal is to protect life and prevent avoidable deaths in the event of a fire. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions after which we will move on to the next item of business, and it would be helpful if those members who wish to ask a question were to press the request to speak button now or to enter R in the chatroom. I call Miles Briggs. Deputy Presiding Officer, I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement as well, but there is nothing new in this statement today. I think that that will be of concern to many householders across Scotland. The cabinet secretary spoke about the awareness campaign and claimed that public awareness of those regulations is now high. However, the Scottish Government's own evaluation report published this week shows that just one in 10 households are not aware of this new legislation, a significant number. Those regulations were postponed a year ago, and I think that that was a welcome step forward, given the fact that we saw the outcome of Covid-19 on homeowners, especially elderly and vulnerable homeowners not wanting workmen coming into their homes. I think that that was a proper step forward, but I ask the cabinet secretary why, in this case, given that the actual Covid restrictions are not going to be lifted until Monday, why she hasn't heard that call again. I also ask specifically how many households now does the cabinet secretary believe in Scotland still need to have those devices fitted? It's really important, given the fact that this comes into force in just 13 days' time. The important thing here is to get on with supporting and encouraging homeowners to put in those devices that potentially could save lives. I hope that we all agree on the importance of that. On the awareness of the changes, as I said in my statement, the independent analysis shows that, at the end of last year, 88 per cent of homeowners were aware of the new legislation. I know from my own mailbag that, in terms of people asking some questions around this, awareness is high. On the question that he asked about how many, as I answered in my answer to Sarah Boyack during portfolio questions, we won't know the answer to that until we have the Scottish household survey, which will ask that question. This is a measure that is important that homeowners take. Of course, we are only talking about homeowners here. Private rented tenants and social rented tenants will have that device provided already or will be coming with there by their landlord. This is for homeowners. It is really important that homeowners prioritise getting those devices installed because it literally could save lives. We support the vital fire safety improvement, but if homeowners can't comply, the measure won't start saving the lives that we hope it will. The pensioner who called me yesterday panicking their insurance will be invalidated and will be the latest who wants to comply but can't get the kit until March. The Association of British Insurers has said that insurers will expect that households are compliant with any legislation but are not likely to ask questions about specific standards but that it is up to individual insurers to decide how to respond to that new standard. Does the cabinet secretary accept that insurers will have every right to interpret the legal enforcement date and the standards as the one-in-law? Relying them on them may not be likely to ask questions but does not give homeowners the assurance that they deserve. Letting that happen when so many homeowners can't get access to alarms is bad policy. Will the cabinet secretary instruct our formal delay and give homeowners more time to source the alarms and comply? No, I don't believe that that would be the right thing to do because there's already been a delay and at the end of the day what we're talking about here are devices that have the potential to save lives and I don't think that it would be right and if I had had a further delay, I think that questions would be quite rightly being asked of me that given these are life, potentially life-saving devices, is it right to delay the regulations coming in? I don't think that it's right to delay but I do recognise the issues that the member rightly raises. Let me reiterate again about the work that we've done with the Association of British Insurers who understand those issues very well indeed and that's why they have been discussing with their members and ensuring that their members are aware of the changes and have stated very clearly that, while insurers may ask customers whether the property is fitted with working fire alarms, it's not likely that they would ask about specific standards, that is the practice within the insurance industry. However, as I said in my statement, anyone who is unsure or unclear on their policy terms and conditions in relation to the new law should in the first instance speak to their insurer. In terms of access to alarms, I recognise that over the last few months there have been issues but I have asked my officials on a regular basis to check the availability in Scotland through either internet in terms of UK supply chains or indeed some well-known DIY retailers and they have told me that the availability of devices has improved and that the cost is around that £200 mark where they are fitted themselves. I also understand about people who might struggle and that's why Cairin Repair Services have dealt with just short of 2,500 inquiries about fire alarms since September of last year and have been supporting people either through the installation of them or subsidised alarms to make sure that people can get them who would be struggling. So I think that we have done what we can and just finally on this point local authorities through COSLA have said that they will be taking a very much a light touch in terms of the enforcement of this. Local authorities will not be knocking at the doors of people's homes to check whether they have these newly installed fire alarms because we recognise that some people will take a bit longer and they will have a reasonable period of time to comply but I think that we all have a duty as elected members to reiterate the importance of households fitting these alarms as quickly as they can. Can I remind all members who wish to ask a question that they should check that their cards are in and that the request to speak buttons are pressed? I call Eleanor Whitham to be followed by Alexander Stewart. As the cabinet secretary said in her statement, the law has come about as a result of the tragic disaster at Grenfell that led to the deaths of 72 people. Can the cabinet secretary outline what evidence the Scottish Government used to determine that these regulations will protect lives? Cabinet secretary, we have looked at the expert advice that has been given to us and it was on the back of the work that was done back post Grenfell by the expert group in terms of recommendations that could be made that would help to improve fire safety that these interconnected alarms were recommended. As I said in my statement again, it had huge backing from the public and the duty is upon us to do what we can. One death from a preventable fire in a home is one death too many. If those devices can help to save lives then surely that is something that we should all support. Alexander Stewart is to be followed by Kenneth Gibson. Age Scotland has highlighted for much of the last year that there has been continued anxiety among the public regarding trades people into their homes, particularly among older people due to the spread of the new strains of Covid. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the prevalence of the virus for much of the last year means that it is simply not reasonable to expect people to meet the February deadline? I appreciate the concerns that have been expressed by Alexander Stewart. That is why, in those circumstances where it is reasonable for those reasons that he cites that someone does not feel comfortable or perhaps have been shielding, that is a reasonable proposition as to why they would not be able to meet those deadlines. We understand that. As I have said throughout this, local authorities at the end of the year, the enforcement agency, understand that too and are going to take that light touch approach to make sure that, if people need a bit more time to get them installed, whether it is for that reason or any other reasonable reasons, that is accepted. I think that it is important. Hopefully, with the Q&A that MSPs will get in terms of the information that I will provide, that will help to answer some of those constituent inquiries. Can the cabinet secretary advise us to how many lives the full implementation of this specific measure would be expected to save in a year? For those who are unable to install themselves, given the current number of installers who are unevenly spread across Scotland, how long does she anticipate it will take to install alarms in every owner-occupied house across the country? As I said earlier, 52 per cent of domestic fire incidents a smoke alarm had alerted documents to the fact that there was a fire giving people a greater chance of escape. Interlinked fire and smoke alarms increased the chance of being alerted more quickly by all going off simultaneously regardless of where the fire starts. That will undoubtedly mean that more people are alerted earlier and more lives will be saved in Scotland each year. It is hard to put a figure on that, but certainly that is the advice that we have been given by the experts. The numbers of people who are complying and how quickly people will get those alarms fitted. I suspect that the vast majority of people will have them fitted before the 1 February deadline. We will know that as we get the household survey carried out over the next period. However, we recognise that a small number of people will require longer. As I have said in answer to previous questions, it is important that people are given a reasonable period of time to comply. We will be monitoring that situation going forward. The Scottish Labour freedom of information request revealed that half a million pound funding for care repairs to provide this institution has helped little barely 800 people. Can the Cabinet Secretary say how many people have been supported so far in Edinburgh, not at the end of the financial year, given an estimate of the number of households in Edinburgh, who are still to comply with the regulation and make sure that funding is given so that all low-income, disabled and pensioners households can comply? The answer that I gave previously showed that care and repair services across Scotland have supported in one way or another around 2,500 people. I do not have the figure specifically for Edinburgh, but I am happy to write to the member if that information exists at that detail, and I am happy to write to him if that would be helpful. As previously mentioned, the standards for the interlinked alarms were set nearly 15 years ago for new builds and nearly a decade ago for the private sector. I agree that all houses should have the same standards. Why did those regulations take longer to introduce? In 2013, the Scottish Government published a sustainable housing strategy with a commitment to develop a new cross-10-year standard for housing. We have engaged with stakeholders since then to develop our proposal for a new housing standard for Scotland, based on housing as a human right. We will seek views on that in a public consultation later this year. Following the tragic fire at Grenfell in 2016, we made a commitment to accelerate the fire alarm elements of the new standard, and the regulations that were introduced to the Parliament in 2018 will achieve that aim. The minister must really stop saying that the alarms can be installed for £220 or less. The figures are often far, far higher, and she knows that all too well. Is not this a prime example of the Government's ability to talk a good game but its inability to deliver? The opposition even gave the Government an extra year to get this done, but it still was not possible. Lives could be at risk, so what has the Government got so badly wrong with the installation of this programme? I do not accept that characterisation at all. I think that there was a delay for good reasons because of Covid, and that was supported across the chamber. I have made clear that £220 is for the purchase of the alarm system. Of course, the installation costs would be on top of that, however, most households will be able to install the alarms themselves. However, because of disability, age or whatever other issues, people require support. That is why we gave £1.5 million to care and repair and to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service in order to help those more vulnerable people to be able to get those alarms installed. I would have thought that that is something that Willie Rennie would support. A number of constituents have been in contact raising their concerns in relation to understanding their alarm requirements, availability and cost. Although I welcome the assurance that the council enforcement will be like touch, can the cabinet secretary set out how the Scottish Government will track progress on meeting the standard? As I said earlier, the Scottish House conditions survey collects information on homes and minimum standards for housing. The legislation will add adequate provision of fire alarms to that minimum standard. Future iterations of the survey will collect data on compliance with the element of housing standards. I thank the cabinet secretary for her statement. I do not know where her officials shop, but I have just checked that every B&Q in Edinburgh has no availability until after the date, so perhaps she could go back and ask her officials where they shop. I am interested in the cabinet secretary's a bit more time and a reasonable time to see perhaps clarify what that means in factors. Is it days, weeks or months? I was clear when I said in my answer previously that in terms of online retailers with UK supply chains, and I mentioned DIY retailers. I take the point that Jeremy Balfour makes about Edinburgh, but there are online retailers available with UK supply chains that are able to supply these devices. My officials have checked on a regular basis and checked as of this morning. I would have thought that Jeremy Balfour and other members would be wanting to focus on first of all supporting people to comply where they can, but also to make sure in the dialogue with constituents that we are reassuring people on the points that I have said that if people need more time and if they are struggling to get a device because of the availability issues in their local area, that is a reasonable reason for having to have more time. A reasonable period in legislation is never defined, as Jeremy Balfour will know. It is a reasonable period in the circumstances that the individual has, but I would hope that Jeremy Balfour and others will reassure people that they will not be criminalised, that they will not be hounded by the local authority in terms of enforcement, but we would expect them, when they can, at the earliest opportunity to prioritise putting in those potentially life-saving alarms. Ariane Burgess, by Fiona Hyslop. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement, and I welcome the introduction of these regulations next month. Everyone should have at least this level of protection in their homes, regardless of tenure. I ask the cabinet secretary to say a little more about the implications of non-compliance, as there are no penalties for non-compliance other than missing out on potentially life-saving measures. What are the key issues that people need to be aware of if they do not follow the regulations? Well, the key issue is that their safety is not as enhanced as those who have these interlinked fire safety devices. We know from the experts that have told us that that potentially could save lives, and therefore the message from all of us, I would have thought first and foremost, is that people should comply as quickly as they can. The member is right that there are no penalties as such for non-compliance. The local authorities have the duty to ensure compliance, but they are not going to do that in a knocking on people's doors way. We are expecting people to take that measure as a priority as home owners to put that perhaps above other things in relation to the installation of the fire alarms. We understand some of the issues that will require people to have more time to do that. As I have explained in answer to a number of questions now, what those reasonable excuses or reasons for needing more time would be, and the message to people is to do it as quickly as they can, because it could be life-saving for them and their families. Many local authorities, including whistled in council, have removed care and repair services and some constituents tell me that installers are scarce. Important shortages are a delayed delivery of already-ordered alarms to them and costs of living pressures are causing practical and financial challenges. Are there any other proactive actions that can help to resolve the real challenges facing some, but by no means all, to get private sector dwellings up to the same and important safety standards as other sectors, including, for example, some very public statement of assurance from the Association of British Insurers and where this leaves people in coming weeks? First of all, all local authorities have broad discretionary powers to provide assistance to home owners where work is needed to look after homes or to meet statutory standards. Local authorities best place to decide what assistance is provided to meet local priorities using local resources. The additional support that we have provided to care and repair services is targeted to assist owners who are least able to fit alarms themselves, and it is not intended to be a substitute for local initiatives where those local initiatives have been taken forward by the local authority. In terms of any statements by ABI, my understanding is that they have been communicating actively with their members to make them aware. I am happy to keep that regular dialogue with ABI in terms of anything more that they can do in terms of public-facing messages as part of the lead-up to those requirements from 1 February. I call Christine Grahame, and then I will call Grahame Simpson, who will be the last MSP that I am able to call. I would ask for succinct questions and answers, so I can get you both in. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The cabinet secretary is aware that I wrote to last year raising many of the concerns that have been iterated here today. I welcome her statement. However, £200 is an optimistic figure even for just the kit. Some people are paying £500 for supply and fit for a two-up, two-down. Can therefore the cabinet secretary advise how vulnerable and elderly can access the financial support that she has mentioned from the fire and rescue service? I was not aware that they were providing it. Again, I will make sure that that information is included in the circular that is going to MSPs, but between care and repair and the fire and rescue service, they are providing practical advice and support to vulnerable people. We have had very good feedback from both in terms of that support, but I will make sure that that level of information is included in the information after this for brevity. The penalty for non-compliance will come if people have insurance claims turned down because they have not got the alarms. Is the cabinet secretary seriously saying that that will not happen? I am asking the member to remember what this is about. It is about the installation of devices that the experts have told us could potentially save lives. I would have thought that that was the overriding concern and priority for every member of this Parliament. I could not have been clearer what the ABI has said about insurance. It is a requirement to have working fire alarms. They do not specify the standards for those. They have been clear. That is what the industry has told us. At the end of the day, everybody should make sure that they get in touch with their own insurance company if they have concerns. Perhaps some members—whether it is Graham Simpson or anyone else—would have at least welcomed the fact that this is a measure that could potentially save lives. I find it extraordinary that members seem to be against those measures being brought in. I find that extraordinary. I would hope that, in your communication with constituents, your first part of your communication is to reiterate the importance of complying, because that could be a life-saving measure. That is what I would ask you all to do. The information that I will provide after this statement will help you in order to make sure that you provide accurate information to your constituents. There will be a very short pause before we move on to the next item of business.


Hey guys. This week in the rundown, NASA. Yes, NASA is looking for sailors to become astronauts. We're going over 21 days of total sailor fitness. We talk with sailors from CNO's Rapid Innovation Cell. There are seven things you need to remember about transferring your educational benefits. Now this is pretty cool. NASA is now accepting applications from officers and enlisted to join their space program. Only seven of the 338 astronauts are active duty. To be eligible, applicants must have a four year degree in science, engineering, or math and a minimum of three years experience in their field. Other requirements include being physically fit, having 20-20 vision, and being at least 62 to 75 inches tall. Now I don't think I'm eligible, but if you are and if you're interested, go to USAJobb.gov and search for the astronaut applications. They're being accepted until February 18th. The Every Sailor Everyday Campaign has begun their 21 days of total sailor fitness. The campaign is providing sailors with tips and resources to manage holiday stress throughout the season and into 2016. The campaign began December 14th and is expected to last until January 3rd, 2016. Each of the 21 days will focus on a different area related to holiday stress to help sailors cope physically, spiritually, emotionally, and financially. Topics covered will include navigating transitions and deployment during the holidays, fitness and nutrition tips to avoid seasonal weight gain, the impact of alcohol on stress, strengthening relationships, and more. Check out the blogs that goes more in-depth by visiting navstress.wordpress.com. This week, MC1 Fabrizio from CNO's office talked with some of the sailors from CNO's Rapid Innovation Cell, who are working on creating a new LinkedIn-style detailing portal. The first trial run of the system is currently being developed, with the goal of eventually improving both the officers' and the listed process throughout the fleet. This supports CNP's priority to better match sailor's skills with fleet requirements. Here's a couple of clips from their discussion. When my order started coming up, I called the detailer, I gave him my preferences, and he gave me a list of three or four jobs. With this, it seems like what hopefully happens is that it's this idea of transparency and really getting market forces involved, where I can see opportunities that I would want to do, and maybe I didn't really, in that five-minute conversation with my detailer, he didn't understand all the skill sets and, you know, all my desires and interests that really make me like who I am and what I could bring to the table. The full video is on the CNO's Facebook page. Finally, All Hands has a blog that lists seven things you need to remember about transferring your educational benefits to your family members. The blog provides information on using your post-911 GI bill, tips for ensuring your family members are eligible, and links to help get you started. Check out the blog by clicking the graphic on the All Hands homepage. Well, that's all we have this time. There will not be a rundown episode during the holiday leave weeks, so I'll be sure to check back in when you guys, when 2016 hits. As always, be safe, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to you all. From the Chief of Naval Personnel, I'm MC2 L.J. Burleson. Thanks for watching.


Dillunio. Mae'r ffordd yw'r ysgolwyddiad yw'r cyfnod ddrwyf yn ddylch i'r cyflym, ac mae'r cyflym yn ddylch i'r cyflym, yn ddylch i'r cyflym i'r cyflym i'r Ffather Christopher Heenan, y Parish Priest at St Margaret's Memorial Church, in Dunfermling. Fyelodd, myfyrdd, ymddangos cyfnod ddysgu'r parlymydd Felly, dbwyng i'r llif在gwad. Many of our visitors come to Dunfermlyn and we are pleased to welcome those who come to visit our beautiful church and the Shrine of St Margaret of Scotland. One group that this group recently particularly stands out. They were a group of over 50 Indian children and their leaders. Their origins lie in Kerala in India but they all live now in and around Edinburgh. ac yn ddechrau i'r Chirw Malabar, unrhyw ychydig yr ysgoleth ddod. Mae'n cyfnodd i'r rhan o'r llangodau i'r rhan o'r rithwm, ac rwyfodd i'r rhan o'r llunsh, rwyfodd i'r rhan o'r llwyr i'r llwyr i'r Siddmargrwyth dyn Dyn Ffermlyn. I was impressed with how they preserved their own culture, but with how open and eager they are to learn more of the culture and the history of Scotland. At the end of the tour, I was highly impressed with how the young people had soaked up so much and answered every question posed to them. Even though she died over 900 years ago, Margaret has much to offer Scotland still. She came as an exile to this land, fleeing political unrest, and she found a welcome and a home. She worked to further education to alleviate poverty where she found it. She worked to reform the church. She encouraged merchants to trade. Perhaps her hardest task was to improve the manners of her husband and of the Scottish Court. Her love of God and her spirit of prayer flowed into her life and found expression in her love of her husband and family, her love of her adopted country and her care for those in greatest need. Margaret cared for the spiritual and the material welfare of her countrymen. She shows the value of being able to welcome those from different backgrounds and cultures and to learn from them and benefit from their gifts and talents. She embodies love and compassion, care and concern, with a strength of spirit and personality that changed those around her for the better. Amongst Margaret's treasured possessions was a relic of the True Cross, the Holy Rood or the Black Root of Scotland. As we gather in Holyrood, we can all learn much from her example as we seek to build an open, welcoming, just and compassionate society.