So let's take a look at problem solving in ancient Egypt. One of the oldest problems in mathematics from the Rhine of the Pyrus is the following. A number and its seventh make nineteen find the number. To solve this problem, I'll close for down three multiplication tables. We'll put those down here. And again, note that the material that we placed in the brackets is not part of the actual text, but it's material that makes the text a little bit more comprehensible. And so the important question is how should we interpret this? Well, let's take a look at this first multiplication table. So we know the problem is that a number and its seventh make nineteen. So notice here that Achmos has taken a number, found its seventh, and presumably added them together. And so we might read this first table as we guessed seven, we took its seventh, and together we found eight. In other words, we guessed a solution. And if we're fantastically lucky, it would actually be the solution, but it's not. We might look at the result as follows. We got a total of eight, but we wanted to get nineteen. So how much do we need to scale our guess by? Well, it's whatever we need to multiply eight by to get nineteen. And that's where the second multiplication table comes in. This is what do we need to multiply eight by to get nineteen? And so we find that we need to multiply our guess by to a quarter and an eighth. And so that means we need to find seven times to a quarter and an eighth. And so that's our last multiplication table, to a quarter and an eighth, multiplied by seven. Which gives us our answer, sixteen a half and an eighth. Now Achmos does many examples of this type of problem, and in the text this approach is usually accompanied with the word aha, which means, no, it's not the name of a Norwegian band. The word in ancient Egyptian actually refers to heap. And in modern terms what Achmos is doing is using a form of proportional reasoning called single false position. And that works in modern terms as follows. We guess a solution, see if it works, and if it doesn't, we'll scale it by an appropriate factor. So for example, a quantity and its half makes sixteen, let's find the quantity. So our method of single false position starts off by guessing a solution. And so we guess a solution, and the only restriction on this guess is that it should be something we can take half of. So let's guess, oh I don't know, how about eight? So we're supposed to take the quantity and its half, so let's take the quantity, that's eight, half of the quantity, that's four, and so together the quantity and its half make twelve. Now if we were fantastically lucky, or an extremely good guesser, we could have guessed the actual solution, but we didn't. Our guess of eight only gave us twelve, but we wanted sixteen. So we need to scale our guess. And the question you've got to ask yourself is, what times twelve makes sixteen? So we'll form that multiplication table for twelve. So one gets us twelve. We want to make sixteen, so we'll take the aliquote part one-third. Now we have the pieces we need, and so that tells us one and a third times twelve makes sixteen. And this gives us our scaling factor, one and a third, and so now we multiply our guess by this scaling factor. Now we could either take eight, one and a thirds, or one and a third eight, but it'll generally be easier to multiply our fractional amounts. So we'll start with one, one and a third, then double it a few times, and since we actually wanted eight, one and a thirds, our product will just be this last row. And that gives us our solution, ten, and two-thirds. Or how about a number, its half, and its third make thirteen find the number. So we guess, whatever we guess, it's got to be something we're willing to take half and a third of. So let's guess six. So we have our number, we find half and a third, and so the number is half and its third make thirteen. Oh, eleven, not thirteen. So again, if we're fantastically lucky, we might have actually guessed the solution, but we probably won't. And that's okay because we can scale our guess. It's helpful to think about this in the following way. Our guess got us eleven, but we wanted to make thirteen. And so the next question we have to ask ourselves is what times eleven makes thirteen? In other words, what do we have to multiply our result by to get what we want? So let's answer that question. We'll form a table of multiples of eleven. The only aliquot part is the eleventh. We can double the eleventh by looking up our two-over-end table. That turns out to be one-sixth, one-sixty-sixth. And to make thirteen, we'll need these two pieces. And so the way to read this is if we multiply our result eleven by one-a-sixth and a sixty-sixth, we'll get thirteen, which is what we want to make. And so that means we want to multiply our guess by this amount. So we'll form a table of multiples of one-one-sixth, one-sixty-sixth. We'll double. We'll double again. And we used our table again to find the double of one-thirty-third. Since we want six times, we'll take the two and the four, and that gives us our answer. And so our solution is seven, a twenty-second, a thirty-third, and a sixty-sixth.


Thank you for your support and thank you for my new opportunity to continue to serve at the next level. What this new position just does is put me on track to make four decades of service and 500 grill weekends. The goal is with insight. Fly halfway around the world, meet other aircraft at critical rendezvous locations and times to force extend combat capability. Land at an unfamiliar and often maybe unfriendly airfield. Had that air crew make decisions on what's going on with weather. Task Force West has stood up here to 185th and critical information was properly coordinated and communicated in the Joint Force headquarters to allow the state to make critical and often lifesaving decisions. I knew you will, but I always like to mention is the airmen in this wing have the same desire to see the wings to see as you do. To share in this special occasion. It's exciting. It has been either commander or public.  We had a lot of significant challenges and the thing that as I compare notes across the country There is something absolutely unique and special about what we are who we are to 185th. When you see an issue like COVID come at you, this team got together. We marched right through it. And I would tell you, we never lost it. We continued to perform, train and deploy at exactly the same levels and honestly above normal under the constraints of COVID. It was absolutely amazing to watch this team go with that kind of diversity. Next question, super easy. Are you confident that Sonia, so that right Sonia can continue your mission? Absolutely. So, Colonel Morrison came back to the wing just over three years ago and filled a mission support group commander, moved up to the Vice Commander. She has been absolutely integral in everything we're doing and so fully expect for her to be capable of moving this. And then she's also already embedded into where we're going, the mission, the future mission, the infrastructure. All the things we have on the table that they're excited about getting at her. She's right here and ready to go pick up the ball and run. For folks in Zuland who might not know who she is, how would you describe her? So, she is from when she started in Des Moines and she started on the Army side. She was initially Army helicopters and then moved from there to the 132nd Air, came to the 185th. Then back to the 132nd where she moved the RPAs and then on to the Joint Coast Headquarters where she worked directly from General Ford and then came back to the 185th. So, she has an absolute diversity of experience that makes her incredibly well-rounded when it comes to going to a military position and being able to move inside the state with Army and Airside. And then be able to move the ball on a national level as well. What do you hope the folks that work under you remember about your time here? I hope they remember that I absolutely care about them, about this room, about our future. It's been my passion here both that we drive our culture to be as strong as possible, make this the best place in the world to work, make it a unit that performs the functions of an absolute highest level, and that every Airman is connected and understands that the supervisors or bosses or commanders care about them, and that it is a great place to be of this type of community, pay to leave. Alright, anything else you want to add? Thank you for getting asked about it. It's perfect. Alright. Thank you very much Mark. Yeah, appreciate it. Good.


What if I were to tell you that a game developer has now confirmed a new game coming to not just Nintendo Switch because well yeah, new games come to Switch all the time, but also to the Nintendo Switch successor known as the Switch Next Gen or the Next Generation Switch or as it's tentatively called out there, the Nintendo Switch 2. Again, we don't really know the name of the platform, but what we do know is a developer has now confirmed a game coming to that platform which is quite exciting considering that the platform hasn't even been fully acknowledged by Nintendo other than something's happening in 20xx, right? So look guys, before we dive into this I just want to remind you that we are on a road to 150,000 subscribers, so I'd appreciate it if you drop a like, subscribe to the channel and go ahead and ring that bell to be notified of all future uploads. I don't want to waste too much of your time, this is going to be a pretty quick video, but a developer confirmed to a Spanish website called RevoGamers and we have a tweet up here and the translation says, Tamarindo's Freakin' Dinner, the next game from at-celebrity Emblem who is responsible for the brilliant Baobab's Mausoleum will come to Nintendo Switch and also to its successor as its creator has confirmed to us. Now to try to get clarification for this, Jake Steinberg from GameXplain responded to the post and said, Hello Jake from GameXplain here, I just want to confirm, did the developer really mention the Nintendo Switch successor? And then this guy called Jacob Jazz, but if you notice it's actually at-celery Emblem responded, so the actual developer of the game responded. Apparently, Jacob Jazz, I think he's a one-man developer, said, Hi, yes, so what he's just saying here is, yeah, I did tell him we're bringing it to the Nintendo Switch successor. So what does this really mean? In the grand scheme, this isn't going to tell us when the system is coming out, this isn't going to tell us what the plans are, this isn't going to give us an idea of specs even. Even if a major third-party developer like, say, Activision came out and said yes, we will be releasing Call of Duty on the Switch successor next year, that still wouldn't even tell us what the specs of the system are. So what does this information mean? Why are we even talking about this? Well, it's because it's the first confirmed game coming to the next Nintendo system. Now does that mean this developer has a dev kit, a one-man dev team, has a dev unit? But I don't know, I don't know how likely that scenario is, because the likelihood that indie developers have dev kits would be based on the timing of when the system would come out. So if this developer has a dev kit right now, well, that to me would suggest this Switch successor must be coming out by March of 2024, right, it has to be pretty quick if Nintendo is putting it in hands of indie developers. Now that's the thing, if he has a dev kit, that could be what that indicates, but he's not claiming he has a dev kit, he's claiming that it's releasing on the next platform. Now this could just be a plan, of course he might be planning to release it, but it doesn't say plan to release, it says we'll be releasing. Now it could be that if he doesn't have a dev kit, what he does have is a spec sheet. So what can happen sometimes before developers get dev kits is when they apply to get a dev kit, sometimes instead of getting one right now, because Nintendo might send them out in waves and based on priority of developer size and game sales, they might actually send you what is known as a spec sheet. Now that spec sheet will be under NDA, but what that spec sheet can do is give a developer an expectation of the performance of a platform, which could allow them to then decide if they want to provide development resources for that platform, even before they have. Now in the case of this game, the Termidos freaking dinner, which I believe was announced last year, it does look like quite an interesting game and I don't know about the full aspects of it, but I know that the game that it's apparently a spiritual successor to was actually reviewed really, really well. So again, I'm not going to argue that this game needs something like the Switch 2 hardware, but it is interesting that this person is saying it's coming. So to me, this would say that this person knows maybe a frag, look if he has a dev unit, then he knows quite a bit, but maybe what he's actually knows is a bunch of fellow developers, maybe he's got a spec sheet from Nintendo. And what he does possibly know is that this system is coming out sometime relatively soon. Now what is relatively soon mean, well, look, the term soon can already mean anything right like, Hey, look, if I say something is sooner and it happens, you know, two years from now, well, that's a hell of a lot sooner than happening 10 years from now. So what I actually mean here is that I think the system is coming out in the next 12 months. Now that's not throwing a lot out there, right? We're talking a 12 month period, we're talking September to September. But I think what this does is help confirm that sort of timeframe. If there's going to be a game actually planning to come out on it. We'll see what happens, of course. I don't know when this game actually comes out on Nintendo Switch. It did previously release on Steam. So I'm not 100% sure when we should expect this. I guess it's on, I don't even know, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch. I'm not really keeping up with this is kind of weird. I don't know, man. I'm just like looking up release dates and stuff and nothing's really adding up to me at the moment. All I know is the actual developers like, yeah, man, it's coming to the next system. You guys take from that what you will. I don't really know what else to say about this. So I'm sort of going to let it lie right there. I also wanted to note to you guys that there is a brand new Mario Wonder trailer out there. If you guys are interested about six minutes long, it doesn't really tell us a lot of new about the game. It's mostly just recapping everything that was in the 15 minute presentation down into a six minute presentation. But it does contain some new gameplay. So if you're somebody who needs every single dying moment of gameplay for this game, there is some new gameplay in it. And look, I don't really want to show you guys guys seem to get yelled at every time I show it. People, people are being weird with Mario Wonder. Can we just stop and say for a moment like it's getting really strange around this game. It's like people yell at me when I show official media for a game. I want to make, I'll take this moment to just state my brief stance as a content creator and a news deliverer. If it's official media published by Nintendo, it is fair game for me to put it into my videos and not warn you about spoilers. I'm just going to throw that out there because it's official marketing material. If Nintendo releases it, I can put it in my videos. I don't need to warn you. You don't need to like you might feel it's a personal spoiler. Get mad at Nintendo. We are not Nintendo. They have decided that this stuff is okay to use in marketing. So we're going to use it. All right. I just want to sort of make my stance on that clear since I see a number of comments always complain. Don't why do you put, I can't watch your videos. You use the 15 minute, oh I can't, you use the six minute commercial. Yeah, it's official media from Nintendo. And this is before we get into the discussion that like can Mario games really be spoiled? I'm not, I'm not so sure that that's even, even possible. Anyways, thank you guys so much for tuning in and you know what? We'll catch you in that next video.


Thanks. This one is working. Yeah. Hello. Yeah. So everybody able to hear me? Okay. So yeah, today's talk is, so Mike is working, everything is fine. People are settled. It's a good start, right? So today's talk is about having a good start. We all love having a good start. A bit about myself. I'm a Python developer. When I get stuck on dependency issues, like I'm not able to just do my work, that is the interesting stuff, developing things. I get stuck involving like installation issues. So this is how to get rid of those issues. So we will need five different components, which we will be using to build our dev ENV, which are Docker, Vagrant, virtual box, shell script, and some good luck. I will talk about what is good luck here. And this talk is going to be about more on the wise and less about the house because we are all smart. Everything is on the internet. You can get most of the info like how Docker is, Docker works and Linux countries, et cetera. Okay.  It starts from the developer's disk, right? So developer time is very costly for the enterprise. You can easily relate to this fact that hourly cost of developers is equivalent to the monthly cost of servers, right? You hire a developer for $20 an hour or $50 an hour and you get AWS EC2 instance. You are going to... It's going to cost you about $50 for a month. So your developers are costly. Less productive developers increase time to the market. Obviously. So for some reason, your developers are very productive. They have a lot of issues installing stuff, dependency issues, not able to get things running for a new developer in the team. Yeah, in the new team. And all these reasons, all these cases, are potential bad... for bad production. You plan to launch your product in February 2015 and it all deals up to, say, December. And you lost to your competitors. So productivity is very important for your team. I don't know if you are able to make much of this slide at the back. I will just make out the components. So how does the developer workflow look like? So we have a developer. He does his local test. This cycle is like... This thing is very frequent. And then it goes for... And then to the production. So developer to production, this is the least frequently executed thing. And developers' local test, this scenario, is the highest frequency. And one of the stats says 95% of developer time is spent in the development environment, which is very true. So we need to optimize here. This is our interest. We are going to optimize this thing, which is the development environment. So how should a development environment look like? Ideally, it should be production-like. Sure, for sure. Because if you are very... My stuff is running on my laptop, my friend's laptop, but it's not running under production. Where the end users are going to face the app, it's of no use. It should be very quick to set up. Obviously, it takes like four... For my Devi and me to set up my app so that I can start working, or the new developer starts working on it. It's not useful, right? Reputable and upgradable. Quick to set up is one thing, but like other team members are going to push their code each day, other day, and we need to have a... to make the setup repeatable and upgradable as fast as possible, as easy as possible, and simple and easy to use. If you ask me, you can use Chef, but for that, you will need to know a new programming language. I don't like that. It should be something like, by default, everybody should be knowing it. It should be very easy, the learning curve should be very low. They shouldn't require to learn a new language or a new DSL or things like that. So simple and easy. If there is a way, you write a line. And a very complex app with a lot of components, multi-tier application architecture magic. So that's cool. That's a feasible solution. That's the wanted thing here, right? So say a modern architecture, what it looks like. It has, say, one company, EngineX, you have your Flask application, and with Cassandra, Datastore, some XYG server, maybe T-server, or whatever reason, I don't know. RabbitMQ, Elastic... All these cool stuff, right? And then you want to just recreate these things. You have RabbitMQ cluster, but at the least, you want to recreate these things, these components in your development environment. One way is to have one VM, like one virtual box VM running for each one of these components. This is one way. But if you have six components and you are planning to run six VMs on your laptop, I don't know, it's a very good thing, very good thought. Just today, Michael Ford talked about the dependency hell. You have two applications. One is Flask, and it depends on some version 1.0, and other Flask application. For some reason, you are using one more application, and that is using 1.2. And you need to have these applications in the same system. So this is the problem. So the solution we are going to talk about is all of these issues. So yeah, here's the talker. So what is Docker? Docker, most of you, if you are not much into systems level, Linux countries, and those kind of stuff, very easily you can think of it like a lightweight virtual machine. That's it. You can take it like this, and you can work on it. I don't say that don't dig on it like details on the address, but you can use it by just knowing a very light virtual machine. Other than that, the main big win using Docker is it's pretty fast. I mean, starting a VM takes you two minutes to five minutes, maybe. Starting a Docker container takes you milliseconds, or in seconds, two seconds. So it's very fast. So yeah, instead of running VMs, we will be running containers. So how are we going to do that? Okay, some introduction about Docker. So Docker has this kind of images and containers. If you are familiar with AWS, so they have this concept of AWS, AMIs, right? AMIs are the images, run the instance, the running instance, EC2 instance, that gives you a running operating system. So in a similar way, Docker has Docker image, which is the OS image, and when we run it, they call it Docker container, a running container, right? Yeah. About Wegrant, the five components I talked about, what is Wegrant? So Wegrant is a provisioning tool. You can use Wegrant to provision an EC2 instance, remote server EC2 instance. You can use Wegrant to provision a local box, virtual box. You can use Wegrant. With Ansible or Chef, or these kinds of other tools to do a lot of interesting stuff.  So the problem I'm trying to solve here is I'm a developer and it's my preference. I love writing my code on a Mac. And my friend, maybe he loves writing his code on a Windows machine for some reason, and another one he loves writing his code on Open2. And we all join the same company and if we would have a way that this thing could be feasible, I don't know. So is it feasible? Sure thing. We are going to implement that. What we are going to do is this is my laptop and I'm sharing with the machine running inside the virtual box thing. And the virtual machine will be hosting different components of the multi-tire application stack, different components. Each of these components is a running Docker container. In the next XYZ server, these components don't need the application code. But yeah, the Flask app, this needs the application code. So if this Flask application is able to view the code which is residing here on the host operating system, the laptop, not the VM, some day, I need this thing visible to this Flask app. We think the feedback loop which what I'm talking about is a developer needs to have a fast feedback loop. If I change something in my template, like I'm just writing an HTML template, and I want to see how it goes, so I must have a way to see it immediately. I don't want to push to GitHub and then see things on a test server, things like that. So I change my code here on my laptop in a platform-agnostic way. May I Mac? Open to anything. And the Flask app here sees it, it changes the application right away and I can see the app running changes on my laptop. How is it going to be possible? So we are going to use two key one is shared volumes and another is put forward. So... Okay. Could you help me please? I want to show the editor. Show the screen. I'll be doing multiple screens. You need any other ones? I have open to. Okay, leave it. Oh, I got it. How it's coming? Okay, on the other screen, right? On the right screen, right? Now you see that? Yeah. But you are not seeing it? Yeah. So I can do that. You just... Yeah. Got it. Yeah. It's like your virtual screen is here. Okay. So in our Docker, sorry, Wegrind file, we are specifying two things. One is the port forwarding, which is saying, let me get the app which is running on the virtual machine at port 80 and make it visible on my laptop, say Mac or Windows on port 8080. Okay. So anything running on your virtual machine under the virtual box at port 80 would become visible on port 8080. And the Wegrind file has the concept of like provisioning script. So we are providing, okay, this is the provision.ssh script and that basically Wegrind app start our dev envy. It runs that particular script at the startup. So it's something kind of the user data concept which AWS is having. Okay. So here I go with my development setup. I just wrote a one-liner and it should start my full app running with all the components like I am running elastic search and what not. Okay. Simple search application. Okay. It started. So you can see the app running here. Yeah. This is my Mac. The things the application is running under Linux. Yeah. And now I will show you I change the code on my reader and it should be right over visible. The change should be right over visible. On my I am the application where I am running. So I just change this template instead of my application. I write our application. Okay. So as you can see the title there is my application and it changes to our I mean the change is right over visible. So good thing about this is applications applications can become very complex and when you have your when you have in your team a developer who is a front-end engineer and he doesn't like to think about you know back-end systems it may be very interesting to some of people like back-end some people like designing things. They are CSS developers or HTML5 developers and they want to focus their skills on the front-end. So it's not right for us to just bog them down with back-end details. So however complex your application is the developers come the front-end engineer comes up he does the CSS changes without worrying about how this application is getting deployed or how complex is the architecture there. He can simply work straight away. So this increases the productivity for a lot of people who don't want to get into much details of every component. I remember like three years back three years back I joined one company and it got them like it took them four to five days to just set up a devian be like a full application running for me where I could start my work. So this is a problem many of I mean it's very kind of everywhere I see this. So the devian be should be very fast to set up and it shouldn't be getting into our way just like I mean the problem with the front-end is everywhere is okay back to the presentation. So what is minimal impedance mismatch which is the thing is like we want a high fidelity you know resolution to to the production on our devian be as say if your production in principle we could have just done our best one flash cap the flash cap to our developers they work on it and assuming that everything would run fine when they deploy it to production with all the you know moving parts like a Sandra and what not but yeah that way it doesn't work like things could go and a lot of possibilities there so it's actually imperative that we want all of the components as close as possible in our devian be so that is I mean minimizing the impedance mismatch between the production and your development environment so how is this how are we going to achieve so docker what is dockerfile exactly so docker has this concept of dockerfile docker in itself dockerfile is not very useful I have like I have been using docker for a year now version 0.7 and I did a lot of like devian be a range of applications from internet of computational genomics dockerfile in itself is just a dsl you know which has some directives it is just like a shell script so if dockerfile was that awesome then why shell is not so actually dockerfile is not it has just some directives to let out the docker devian or the docker software work the problem with dockerfile is you run your dockerfile to build the images it may work today and it may not work tomorrow and just today I had this problem I was in odd one and trying to build using my dockerfile the net was not running some issues I had to go and then get back my image the image the image is the immutable thing so it is not getting destroyed or it is not getting corrupted problem with dockerfile is shell script going to depend on a lot of third parties exactly like a shell script so how does a dockerfile look basically yeah it is okay I got it enable mirroring yeah it is doing a lot of problem to me just today yeah thanks so this is how a dockerfile so we have this line it is building on a base image which is like from dockerfile java whatever this is a base Ubuntu image which has already java installed so right here like it depends on somebody else image else code right so you cannot depend on that and you know this dockerfile is working today and one month from now you try again building it and the person who made this image some reason he changed everything right and you have you have written the same image name and things don't work so you cannot rely on dockerfiles the only thing which you can rely is the docker images so what that means is you build your image you have this image you use the same image for your development and for your production no change at all and that image is basically your full environment runtime environment including the OS including libraries and including including the app code and everything everything basically that's in your docker image and next time you want to build one first build one have a successful build test it try it everything and if it's working properly then replace then you can replace your old image this is the only thing that's going to work so you cannot rely on dockerfile for sure ok and how are we going to like for the devian v how are we going to solve the problem of having a snapshot of a database inside our devian v so what other projects I worked on was auto.com and they had this like 60 to 80 GB of data and we didn't want to pull all of it into our devian v we wanted some lighter version of it I mean a subset of it so one way was to just randomly select you know some sample points and have it and get it every 24 hours so that we get the latest snapshot but what happened is that some of the app app scenarios which depended on some specific data points was not working we were not able to test it so that is where the selection strategy comes you need to select a good strategy so that every component of the app which you are going to work on has the data you can see all the features working it shouldn't be something like okay like you have a real state app for some reason they have done their section for daily Bangalore and Chennai and your data the data snapshot you took it was just for Delhi and Bangalore but not for Chennai and you never tested it because the data was not there and there were issues with the Chennai thing so you won't be able to catch it so it's very important when you are building the snapshot for your have a good strategy that spans to all the scenarios which the app features needs about host names so of the production we don't usually work with ips we work with host names so I have a MongoDB cluster so I will be using it as MongoDB dot you know immuno.com or something like that with a URL and on the dev envy when we are talking about minimizing the impedance mismatch between production and develop environment we want to have similar thing here on the dev envy itself so how are we going to do that yeah so docker has in fact when you release the docker they have many features on editing the ips host file dynamically but the thing is yeah this is the solution so on the local there basically it overrides the DNS and when go to auto.com on your local system it connects you to the local container not the real application so when it's in the dev envy it works exactly like when it is working in the production okay all of the source code is here on my github account and we have seen a pycon 2014 here thank you and I'm ready for qa docker is built upon elixies right docker didn't invent elixies so docker is just giving developers a good user interface for working with elixies right at the end of the day when you're using a docker right yeah it's process isolation more than a virtualization technique and when you're dealing with a complex web app set of web apps and you're trying to script in databases and stuff like that then how do you deploy code synchronously across these dockers in a fashion and also I mean is there any particular reason you're trying to build your own docker file for stuff like elastic search that comes out of the box with its own docker images yeah so yeah I didn't build that docker file I put it here just an example how the docker file looks I am using the exact from the you know of the chef docker file which is available from the docker hub docker index but when you have a very I mean when you are building a custom application you are not like you have elastic search config file a custom file right so for that you need to change I mean you can inherit from the base docker I mean elastic search of the shelf but you will need to change some of the stuff so about the deployment is like okay I missed one of the concepts is the registry right so registry so like some people have this preference they don't want to share their code I mean the companies don't want to share their code with other cloud providers maybe docker hub or something I know right you're talking about a registry where I can push essentially I would say docker is get for deployment now if I am using a certain docker philosophy at least what the docker deployment philosophy dictates or what has emerged today as the way to do large scale deployments is that you use environment variables your docker files pick up environment variables from the host and those can be passed along into the into the docker containerization or LMCT file whatever you use then why would you want to expose disk data binds and then modify them through another bind over there I mean it just causes sometimes you have AUFS lockups on docker like docker does not give you the full flexibility of butter FS that Alexi would give you but they are I think they are having I mean you have the option to use different drivers right I mean that's the default one right you can use many other drivers with docker because of the isolation it gives at the OS file system level but I don't know I mean they are not drivers I am not able to understand your question actually what is your question exactly why are you using dockers in places where you would rather use an LXC use environment variables to modify your docker your docker files write on that we don't use config files for managing docker but config files are like for example so you are saying like I have to change the config for elastic search I put it in an environment variable right yeah you can do that share it and ask it to pick up the config file if you are using something which doesn't yeah I think you are right there that's how it looks like a write approach how can we configure different subnets in using variant is that something we can do I have not tried doing a lot of stuff and subnets on those stuff using variant so I don't know that much ok thank you Anubhav we thoroughly enjoyed your presentation


I'm not sure about polite name calling. I think we'll leave that by the by. The next item of business is a debate on motion 6186 in the name of Peter Chapman on agriculture. Can I have members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request to speak buttons now? I call on Peter Chapman to speak to and move the motion. Mr Chapman, eight minutes are thereabouts, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I refer members to my register of interests. Over a year ago, I remember reading the Audit Scotland report into the CAP IT system, and I have never read such a damning document in all my years in business as that one. It showed a governance structure riddled with incompetence, a budget while out of control, and no prospect of getting the additional functionality that was promised. At the time, the SNP Government seemed to be absolutely committed to getting this fiasco under control. We had Fergus Ewing in the chamber apologising to farmers and promising that action would be taken. I remember it well, he said, I will get enabooted. Now, Cabinet Secretary, I'm not sure if you have got enabooted, but you are certainly in it. This year's update from Audit Scotland is predictably not much better. The Scottish Government is at risk of £60 million in fines from the EU, but the First Minister does not seem to be overly concerned. Presiding Officer, it is amazing that, after all the careful work that Audit Scotland has put in and its careful calculations, the First Minister thinks that she knows best and she reckons that it probably won't be that much, so why should we get worked up over it? Obviously, I recognised that last year, the Auditor General said that the range of costs would be in the region of £40 million to £125 million, but does he recall that we have made it clear that the actual estimated penalty is so far as we can ascertain that the current time is actually £5 million and therefore the factual position is substantially less bleak than has been painted? The interesting thing is that it came down to £5 million because we have got an extra three months to pay the monies out until the end of October. If that is going to happen this year, then maybe the £60 million will be a different figure again. Audit Scotland has come up with a new report and that is a figure that I can legitimately use today. It is indicative of the shocking complacency that defines the attitude of this Government to what has been the worst cash crisis in a generation for our farmers. The response to that is no doubt that there are many staff working hard to get a system going as soon as possible and that IT experts are now getting the grips with the system. Unfortunately, as reported by Audit Scotland, there is a risk that, as and when contractors leave, there is an inadequate procedure to ensure that knowledge is transferred. Now just another of the risks highlighted by this report. Now, as we speak, out in the local area offices we have teams working overtime and under huge pressure to deliver for our farmers. But whose job is being made impossible by this faulty, overpriced IT system? Fergus Ewing regularly sings their praises and I totally agree. They have been doing their absolute best and have had to endure angry exchanges with farmers who are at their wits end. Please sit down, Mr Wightman. Mr Wightman is asking if he had taken intervention, but he didn't respond, so he can't have two members standing at the same time. Unless you wish to do that. I missed that. Sorry, Presiding Officer. I'm going to carry on. As we speak, in the local area office we have teams working overtime and under huge pressure to deliver to our farmers. Fergus Ewing regularly sings their praises and I totally agree. They have been doing their absolute best and they have had to endure angry exchanges with farmers who are at their wits end because they can't pay their bills. But staff are working with their hands tied behind their backs. In Cabinet Secretary, it is your fault. I know that farmers across Scotland realise that front-line staff are working their socks off every day to ensure that their payments are made as quickly as possible. I have heard that, in some offices, staff are being asked to cancel holidays and take on yet more hours as we rapidly approach the June 30 deadline for payments. I have heard you this time. Yes, indeed. I helped you, Mr Wightman. Thank you, Presiding Officer, for taking intervention. Mr Chapman confirmed whether the £101,000 in 2015 and the £76,452 in 2016 received by Peter Chapman and company was received on time or not. Just to be with me a minute, Mr Chapman, sit down please. It was all about his own opinion. I think that that's a matter of whether you may wish or wish not to respond to, Mr Chapman. It was totally inappropriate and I will not respond to it. Of course, that brings us to another of the serious issues that this report makes clear that still needs further work. The Scottish Government is required by EU regulations to make 95 per cent of payments by the end of June. There is a great deal of uncertainty about whether that can still be achieved or if farmers will be left waiting yet again. Frankly, I don't believe that it can be achieved, but maybe the Cabinet Secretary can reassure us today on this subject or is he intending to ask for another extension to the payment window from the EU. Hopefully, Mr Ewing will be able to answer that question when he speaks today. Even if that can be achieved, it is still the case that farmers have punished far too harshly for minor errors. Let me give one example. A constituent of mine who forgot to attach maps for this year's greening application but who did all the work, had all the acres in place and had all the relevant information is facing a possible £16,000 penalty. What makes the situation worse is that last year a map was not required for this scheme. Assuming that his income is only £12,500, as is the average for 2016, even an SNP minister should be able to see that this leaves him in the red. His whole year's profit gone at a stroke because of one simple mistake. Perhaps the Cabinet Secretary can explain why he can make mistakes but still keep his job, but my constituents mix a minor one like this and can lose all his income. Or is it the case that stronger for Scotland simply means more support for the league of ministers while leaving struggling farmers in the larch? One would think that, after this list of failures, there might be some good to take away from all of this, that the worst is behind us. I am sorry to say that that is not the case. In addition to the issues that are plaguing this system every day, there is a real risk to the payment process from the absence of a back-up system. This was highlighted a year ago by Ireland Scotland and nothing has been done. If a ransomware attack like that which hit our NHS and created havoc around the world just a few weeks ago were to be carried out on the Carpite East system, it would be cataclysmic. I am staggered that the SNP have done nothing at all to put in basic safeguards and I should have to think how we would recover from such an attack. Let's not forget that rural communities will have to go through this fiasco all over again as the system is not expected to be fully compliant until 2018 at the earliest. That means that for nearly half their time in Government, the SNP have failed to get the grips with this issue and, assuming that the system works by 2018, the SNP will have spent five years not delivering on a system for farmers, not delivering vital money on time into the places that need it most. Presiding Officer, this Government has spent its time apologising, explaining away and excusing their failure to work for rural Scotland. The question is, can we ever expect them to take some positive action and get on with finally fixing their mess? I move the motion in my name. Thank you, Mr Chapman. I call on Fergus Ewing, Cabinet Secretary, to speak to mover member 6186.4 for six minutes of their abouts, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It's always good to have the opportunity to debate agriculture in this chamber, but it is disappointing that, with so much potential for debate on this topic, the Conservatives have focused narrowly on one specific issue. I recognise absolutely the importance of this issue. There is significant work still required. The response plan published today makes that clear, and, while improvements have been made, resolving the outstanding problems remains my foremost priority. I want to focus my time, however, on the role of agriculture now and in the future, and on its positives. Agriculture plays a crucial role in our rural economy. There are around 52,000 farm holdings covering 5.6 million hectares. Barley is the largest crop, and there are 600,000 breeding cattle and 2.6 million breeding ewes. Since 2007, we have injected over 1,600 million pounds into the rural economy, supporting over 21,000 projects. That, Presiding Officer, is in addition to over £400 million direct annual support to farmers and crofters. Since 2015, we have supported 130 young and new farmers with £7 million in funding. Between 2007 and 2013, an estimated near 32,000 jobs were created, and for every £1 spent, £2.30 was generated. I announced the latest round of food processing and manufacturing grants worth 5.8 million to support butchers, food processors, pie manufacturers and farmers to invest in equipment, products, facilities and jobs all over Scotland. The success of our agricultural sector was demonstrated only this week with the publication of the most recent food and drink export statistics. Those showed that the value of exports has grown by 10 per cent compared to the same period just last year. Those statistics also make plain the importance of membership of the EU single market and, indeed, with the EU being the largest market outwith the UK for Scottish food and drink, accounting for 70 per cent or £1,000 million of our food exports alone. All of that shows that the precarious position that we now find ourselves in, an extreme Brexit that would remove all the benefits that agriculture in Scotland currently enjoys, would have a devastating impact. That is why Scotland must be included in the Brexit negotiations. The reasons are not political, they are practical. We must protect the interests of our agricultural sector. To deliver the best possible environmental and product people on the land, as we debated in respect of crofting just yesterday with people such as Mr Finlay of Light Mind, to produce more food for ourselves and for export abroad and to support development of the sector in the future, we need to maintain our share of funding and access both to people and markets. It is important that we look to the future. Sustainability means growing markets. The recent achievement of BSE's negligible risk status now gives us potential to do that for our quality meat sector. It also means supporting environmental enhancement to date the agri-environment scheme has invested £99 million in more than 1,500 projects covering everything from enhancing biodiversity to protecting the water environment. Farmers are increasingly innovating and collaborating to find their own solutions, such as through monitor farms and co-operatives. Indeed, I visited North Keswick, North of Inverness, Highland Grains just last Friday. Farmers and crofters already play a key role as the custodians of our land. They helped to shape and also to protect the most fundamental and natural asset. In the future, there is more. We all can and should do to achieve the best possible environmental and productivity outcomes. Those are not conflicting aims, but complementary ones. EU funding, or its equivalent, is vital for the continued viability and sustainability of Scottish agriculture. Our landscape, our needs and our priorities are different from the rest of the UK, as evidenced by 85 per cent of our land being less favourable as opposed to only 15 per cent in England. That is especially so for hill farmers, as evidenced by the testimony of many hill farmers and crofters at the two summits that I recently held in Lanarkyn and Dingwall. We must receive a 16.5 per cent share of funding, future funding for agriculture, and we expect the same amount of funding to be available in the future as now. The power to decide what and how to invest funding to achieve sustainable outcomes must rest in Scotland. We will only get agreement on the next steps through discussions based on mutual respect and by taking a new cross-party, Government, four-nation approach to Brexit negotiations. In that objective, to conclude, I undertake to work as I always try to do with all other parties in this Parliament. I move the amendment in my name. Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. I call on Rhoda Grant to speak to and move amendment 6186.1. Five minutes are thereabouts, Ms Grant. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I appear that there is no end in sight for this fiasco. The Cabinet Secretary and his first days in office said that it would be his top priority. Over a year later, it appears that we are no further forward. There is a number of issues at stake here, the impact on the public purse, the impact on farmers and crofters, and the impact on the rural economy. Can I turn first to our farmers and crofters? They have experienced difficulty in making claims, delays and receiving any money, either substantial payments or loans. It has caused them to postpone future plans for development. All the while, the Scottish Government put out press releases praising their own investment in the rural economy. They are simply adding insult to injury. I have spoken to people who are afraid to claim for a loan as they are not clear under the new system what their entitlement is and they cannot risk an opening. Have somebody's friend calling them when they shouldn't be having their phone on? Sorry, just continue. Spoiling your speech. I've located the culprit. Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. You went bright red. I thought it was you. You'll just have to stop blushing, Mr Carlaw. Sorry, Ms Grant. On you go. Indeed, interrupting my speech is fine. Giving me the time back would be excellent. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I have spoken to people whose development plans have been badly undermined and have had to shelve plans to make their businesses more viable. That will impact on the rural economy for years to come. The knock-on effects from the fiasco will mean that families are losing their livelihoods and going out of business very briefly. Cabinet Secretary. I'm absolutely aware of the difficulties facing individual farmers and crofters, but would Rhoda Grant at least recognise that the loan schemes that I have instituted and last year, which in November, earlier than the normal payment window of 1 December, at the beginning of November, injected around £275 million into the rural economy to those farmers and crofters, and that was at least a pragmatic and efficient act. Rhoda Grant, nobody is arguing that the loans should not have been paid. Indeed, there was a necessity to be paid to allow people to continue to function. Unfortunately, there weren't the full payment, which means that a lot of people have had to put their plans on a back burner, and those plans were effective in making those businesses carry on. Indeed, businesses that depend on the rural economy have also suffered because of that, because even if they do manage to stay afloat, they are facing hardship for years to come, paying off debts racked up as a result. Even if it were fixed tomorrow, the consequences would last a long time. Money and resource need to be put back in to support farmers and crofters as they try to pick themselves up again. It is vital, but once again, it is public money that is spent in the fally of this mess. The Scottish Government needs to take responsibility for it rather than shrug their teflon shoulders. Fiasco also impacts on the larger rural economy. Those who support farmers and crofters who make improvements to buildings, fences and the like, maintenance and investment projects are the things that have stopped and small businesses are closing because of it. It has already fragile a rural economy. It also delays recovery because those skills are lost in the rural economy. Far from investing in a rural economy, the Scottish Government has let them down. Fergus Ewing might say that the system was not his choice. The purchase of the system happened under Richard Lochhead's tenure. That is correct, but he has had a year to sort it out. He has not even begun to make headway. Let me be very clear that it is not a criticism of the regional office staff who have been working long and hard to try to get payments out and to help claimants. It is a failure of management. The fault ultimately lies with the Scottish Government who sourced the system and employed the contractor. Was due process carried out to make sure that they were up to the task? I have seen the secret report and it does not give me confidence that the system will ever work. I wonder whether it will simply limp on until Brexit renders it redundant. However, it is still costing the public purse. Amendments and changes to the system need to be paid for by the public as the loans required to keep farmers and crofters in business. How long will the European Commission continue to overlook its failures with Brexit? There is no need for them to keep us on side. Penalties will add to the cost of the whole project. At a time of austerity, it seems absolutely counterproductive that the taxpayer should be shelling out paying for this Government's failure. I acknowledge that the Cabinet Secretary today has published the conclusions, the executive summary of the Fajitsu report, but it is time that it is totally open with people to the full extent of this and publish the full report so that everyone can see what has happened. I believe... Cabinet Secretary. I am most grateful. I acknowledge that the reason why we cannot and have not published the full report is commercial confidentiality but also cyber security, and that to do so would risk breaching cyber security. Rhoda Grant. That, to an extent, makes my point, because if the report is so damning that it would call into question cyber security, it explains to people exactly what is happening. I think that we need a new system. I am not reassured that this one will ever work. It was a vanity project and it is now time to admit defeat. Presiding Officer, I move the amendment in my name. Thank you very much, Ms Grant. Now I move to the open debate. Speeches are four minutes, a little leeway if you take interventions. I call Finlay Carson, who is followed by Stuart Stevenson. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I wanted to start, if I may, by setting out a few facts and stats on agriculture in Scotland. Some 80 per cent of Scotland's land mass is under agriculture production, making it the industry, and, I guess, the determinant of the landscape that we see around us. Scotland's farmers, crofters and growers produce output worth around £2.9 billion a year. Around 67,000 people are directly employed in agriculture in Scotland and this represents about 8 per cent of the rural workforce. It means that agriculture is the third-largest employer in rural Scotland after the service and public sectors. It is estimated that a further 1,000 jobs, that is one in 10 of all Scottish jobs, are dependent on agriculture. All of that highlights important role agriculture plays in Scotland's economy, its landscape and its people, and the fantastic job our farming community is making despite this SNP Government. Deputy Presiding Officer, for far too long this Government has been failing our rural communities. I do have a degree of sympathy with the Cabinet Secretary in that I accept the knowledge that Fergus Ewing inherited this dog dinner's mess of an IT system from his predecessor back in 2016. At the time, he said all the right things. He did apologise to the farmers and committed to getting it sorted and at the end of the day that is where we need to get to. However, the Cabinet Secretary has totally failed to manage farmers' expectations leaving them with the distrust of him and his SNP Government due to an uncertainty across the sector. Our farmers and crofters are paying the price for this SNP Government's continued mismanagement of the common agricultural payment system. Last week Audit Scotland published a report looking into the failed system and their findings were not complementary. It found that difficulties encountered in previous years have had a significant impact in the processing of current payments. To date, the programme has not delivered value for money, EU penalties and I quote, of up to £60 million are possible for late payments, their figures not mine and the most damning of all is likely that the rural payment system will not be functioning as anticipated until 2018 at the earliest. A computer system that has cost the Scottish Government £178 million to set up which was 75 per cent over budget requires additional costs to set up, not to mention potential fines and it probably won't work until 2018 or maybe later. Not only have this Government failed to get to grips with the mess, the risk being accused of attempting to cover up any further criticism. The Scottish Government have not released a report by Fujitsu which looked into the IT system claiming that it was commercially sensitive and I'm afraid I don't accept the cyber security excuse. Those MPs who were privileged enough I will. Cabinet Secretary. We saw recently what happened to the NHS when there were breaches in its IT system. The advice that I have had as the Cabinet Secretary for the Rural Economy from the chief officer is that to do so would risk similar cyber security breaches. Does Mr Carson not agree that given that that is the case it would be an act of sheer validity if I were to release information which could threaten to breach the cyber security of our CAP IT system? Mr Carson. Thank you for that. I think that the horse has possibly bolted because as far as I understand the report has been leaked and I don't know what that says about security, whether it's cyber security or not. Indeed, the Scottish Government officials confirmed that the report needed remedial action and that there were system defects. It is totally unacceptable for any department and Government to hide behind commercial sensitivity. However, I urge the Cabinet Secretary in good faith to consider publishing a redacted version of the report. Be transparent, allow proper scrutiny and let's get this computer system into a fit for purpose state. That's what the farming communities of Scotland want and that's what they deserve. Where are we now? As of 22 May 1700, Pillar 2 payments with a total value of £14 million were still outstanding. Indeed, the delay to Pillar 1 payments has increased the risk that the deadline of the end of June will not be met. The fact is that it's not so much just about meeting targets. This is about businesses being able to manage their cash flows. Put simply, it's about farmers' livelihoods. It means that farmers can't pay their debtors on time. It means that the piece of equipment is broken down. It means that they can't pay the staff. It means that they can't make prudent investment in their businesses required to build a sustainable future. Now you must conclude. Thank you very much. I'll give me an extra minute. Stuart Stevenson, followed by Claudia Beamish. Please, Mr Stevenson. I should start by declaring a relevant interest. The National Farmers Union provided me with a leader at no cost. The cover price is £3.50. Thank you very much, National Farmers Union. It helps me to stay in touch and I'll come back to that. I also declare that I've registered agricultural holding of under two hectares from which I've derived no income. The leader helps us all to stay in touch. A different publication Farmers Weekly in its 10th of February edition caught the situation in which farming finds itself in relation to the subject farm payments. The department's record of failure when developing systems to support subsidy payments to farmers does not inspire confidence in its ability to cope with the challenges with Brexit that lie ahead. At the same time, taxpayers continue to be hit in the pocket by financial penalties arising from the Government's failure to deliver the scheme properly. The penalties to which the Farmers Weekly refers are £0.5 billion. The failures that it describes are, of course, the Tory failures of the cat payment system in England. It doesn't let us in Scotland off the hook that they are also in difficulties very far from it. It allows us to compare the Tory rhetoric here with its record south of the border. It's not one that much favours my colleagues on the benches to my left. The chair of the Westminster Public Accounts Committee, chaired by a Labour MP with a Tory MP Richard Bacon as Deputy Chairman, was withering on his party's record there. In fact, Bacon has even written a book called Conundrum on the nature and causes of overspending delays and failures in his Government schemes and the failures of other Governments. In contrast here, we have a Government that is fessed up and has acted upon legitimate concerns. A loan scheme introduced to protect the cash flows for farmers in England, no comparable action. Today's motion asks us to note Audit Scotland's June findings. Let's just do that. It says in the audit report, "...significant changes to leadership brought renewed effort to respond to risks." Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. It continues, "...online applications for 2017 opened on time on 15 March and no major system problems were noted in the application period." Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, and thank you for all the hard-working staff at ARE. Now this should be news to Mr Chapman or to me. We were both present at a Parliamentarians meeting with NFUS members which took place at Thames to mark 28 April. We both had confirmation from active farmers that the application system was working unusable. It doesn't mean that the whole system is working but the bit that farmers interact with was working. We also heard that farmers had declined and we know as serious pressures there are. I welcome assurance from the UK Government that funding for CAP will continue in 2020, but in the light of withholding over 100 million of convergence funding, I'm a bit skeptical about the outcome. Today's Queen's speech at Westminster says that we hope to maintain the scope of devolved decision-making powers after exit. Intensive discussion consultation with devolved administrations is needed. However, an agricultural bill has been proposed. I'm going to be quite radical. Why don't we have a joint committee between this Parliament and the Parliament down there to look at that particular bill? Let me just say on important point as a computer person on backup systems, Peter was entirely wrong. It's only the heritage, the legacy systems that are not backed up, not the new CAPI system and all the data was confirmed that it would be okay. Let me end with the farming leader July's edition. The one I have here 66 pages, not a single word on CAPI T or any of the failures. Farmers have moved on. Government is moving on with them. Now you must move on Mr Stevenson. Mr Carson, you wish to say something. I'd just like to put on record that I failed to declare that I was a member of the NFU and I wish to do that at this point. Excellent. That's now the record. I call Claudia Beamish to be followed by John Finnie. Mr Beamish, please. What a pity we have had to rightly focus on the CAP system delivery today in the Tory motion and our amendment instead of on the future of agriculture more broadly. It is extraordinary that we're having to debate the CAP delivery system yet again in this chamber. The abject failure to fix so many of these issues has put our farmers under prolonged financial pressure and it is deplorable that they continue to face the price of this Government's mess. In February 2016 a very desperate point for farmers in Scotland, I met with members of NFUS, Forth and Clyde on farmer Crawford John in my region. At that time many spoke of the stress that they were under and raised concerns about the mental health of wellbeing of farmers and their families. At that meeting I heard of seed merchants suffering loss of business and farmers struggling to meet higher purchase payments. Still, this very day Tom French, vice-chair of the Clydesdale NFUS branch has discussed with me the restricted cash flow difficulties and the obvious effects of the supply trade and on farmers' accountancy ability. Farmers in my region have told me extended credit arrangements in the supply chain have contributed to several businesses downsizing and some stopping trading altogether. The Government's CAP failings took a huge toll not just on farmers awaiting payment but on the whole rural economy. Rural representatives well know the variety of factors that have made rural economies more fragile than urban counterparts through the years and this Government imposed disruption had a serious knock-on effect. In March 2016 the then Cabinet Secretary told this chamber are we going to ensure that all the payments get out? Of course we are. Since then the current Cabinet Secretary has repeatedly assured us on behalf of the Scottish Government that and I quote we are fixing it. Here we are today with some I understand locally of the 2015 payments still outstanding and an un-end economical system riddled with problems. It is heavily disappointing can I just continue this point please to learn that the function alright I'll take it at that point yes. Cabinet Secretary I'm extremely grateful to Claudia Beamish for giving me issues a short time can I just point out as a matter of fact that we have actually completed 99.9% of the pillar 1 payments from last year Ms Beamish. The Cabinet Secretary makes that point that's no comfort to my constituents. It is heavily disappointing to learn that the functionality of the process of the pillar 2 claims had to be deprioritised in favour of pillar 1 important as it is furthermore the integration of the remaining pillar 2 schemes with the rural payment system was removed from the programme scope. It is chaos and so discouraging for farmers looking to invest in agri-environment and forestry schemes. I find it concerning that the Scottish Government has still not established a disaster recovery arrangement for the whole of the cap payment process. These systems are at risk and the Scottish Government's reassurances are no comfort without proper testing and plans. We must commend the staff who continue to work through challenging circumstances anyone can empathise with the prospect of facing a day at work ending deadlines and backlogs of work. The level of pressure is enormous and the Audit Scotland further update noted that the time pressure the programme was working under and the decision to make payments quicker had meant some governance practices such as system documentation and quality controls have been sacrificed. Staff should not be working under this kind of pressure. This level is unacceptable and the structures and processes of the work environment should be monitored closely. The cabinet secretary said that he would fix this mess and effective delivery is long overdue. How much longer does rural Scotland have to wait? Thank you. Strict four minutes now, please. John Finnie followed by Mike Rumbles. Mr Finnie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I have no problem noting the findings of the Audit Scotland report. I think that it accurately reflects the current situation. Much of what we have heard is the appropriate balance from Stuart Stevenson. The IT project in disarray, not that I am accepting the present situation as one of disarray, is not used in the public sector. What is important is the scrutiny that takes place. I would like to, in the very short time, talk about the Rural Economy, Connectivity Committee's scrutiny. There is no doubt that there is a problem being identified. Has it been acknowledged? I heard it acknowledged today and it is acknowledged in the Scottish Government's amendment and previous debates that we have had. Is it the result of neglect? No. Is it the result of a woeful act? No. Is there a lack of oversight on this issue? We will quite clearly audit Scotland and have done in relation to this what they do across the public sector. That is quite rightly vigorously scrutinised what has happened there. Did we get weekly updates on the Rural Economy, Connectivity at the state of payments? We are interested in the mechanisms about the commendable staff effort and I think that it is gratifying to hear a range of members talk about that. The loan scheme, is anything perfect? No, but I think that that was a very positive step. The previous system was not perfect and I dare suggest that future systems will not be perfect either. It is about understanding. I have to say that I do not have sufficient IT knowledge to comment in detail about things, but if an expert tells me that there are issues of security I am inclined to listen. The problem is that the current system of substance subsidies is overly complicated and that has created part of the administrative burden and that is why the development of the IT system was so problematic. I have to say that a lot of this is distracting what the real challenge is to Scottish AgriCulture and it is not the sorting of a computer system it is the long-term implications of Scottish AgriCulture outside the European Union. The UK Government has promised to maintain the current cap funding until 2020, but there are no published plans beyond that. Indeed, there is no guarantee that the IT system that is being debated today will deliver any post-Brexit substance that deviates from the existing cap model. It is Friday by one year since the EU referendum 12 weeks since article 50 was originally triggered and this week saw the start of official negotiations with Europe. What are we going to replace cap with? That needs to be discussed it needs to be debated it needs to be scrutinised and not behind closed doors. I think that there has to be collaborative and working indeed, I believe that there will be collaborative working between Westminster and Holyrood on this. Focusing so heavily on an IT system specifically designed to deliver cap we risk tying ourselves into a light for right replacement of cap and a fail to address the inadequacy and complexities of the existing system. Business as usual for cap will be a missed opportunity, area-based payments and that's the bulk of pillar one continue to reward land ownership rather than sustainable land use that drives up land prices and it's one of the key barriers to further land reform. The Scottish Green Party certainly wants to move forward in the principle of public money for public good. In the short time that's left I want to say that leaving the EU provides an opportunity to simplify the subsidy system and to assure best value for public money, public money for public good and that will not necessarily result in cutting funding to crofters of whom we don't hear terribly much farmers and rural businesses but what's most important is that Scotland's voice is heard in these negotiations. Thank you very much Mr Finlay, I call Mike Rumbles to be followed by Jamie Halcro Johnston. Mr Rumbles, please. 63,000 people are directly employed in agriculture in Scotland but over one million people live and work in rural communities that benefit indirectly from European support for our agricultural industries. I have another figure for you Deputy Presiding Officer. £1 billion. That's the value of EU support that has been due to Scottish farm businesses since the Scottish Government's daybark over basic payments began over two years ago. Now, that is money that those working on farms and crafts across the country plan to use years in advance to employ workers, rent and buy equipment and services and buy seed and feed for the coming season. Despite the Scottish Government's refusal to make a full assessment of the damage to our rural economy we are now starting to see the depth of their catastrophic handling of farm payments. Payments delayed by six months or more. A decrease of 48 per cent of farm incomes. 6,000 farm businesses still to have their payments processed. A third of farms in Scotland operating at a loss and over 100 million pounds of support payments still sitting in the Government's bank account and I see that John Finnie says well nothing's perfect, I've only got another three two minutes, sorry. I have no doubt that the minister inherited a complete mess from his predecessor but I'm also certain that more could have been done over the past year to right those wrongs. In the words of the recent Fujitsu report a report that the minister requested not to be made public but which was covered in the committee many quality assurance and government's practices have been knowingly sacrificed we said that in committee Now this afternoon the Scottish Government have published parts of the Fujitsu report Mr Ewing says in his covering letter that it's a fair and balanced synopsis of the report it is however no such thing Nowhere in that report does it actually say in this report that many quality assurance and governance practices have been knowingly sacrificed if you read this travesty of a synopsis of a report everyone will see that it is not a balanced report and I for one refused the private or secret briefing that Mr Ewing offered to the committee because I think it is wrong this should be in the public domain and it is completely wrong for the government to operate in this closed fashion Over the past two years this government has resided over a systematic and inept mishandling of vital support for a rural economy and shown a complete regard disregard for rural communities When he was first appointed as the minister for rural economy Fergus Ewing told his chamber there must be no repeat of the 2015-16 cab de Bakl and I quote from his speech the farming industry needs to have confidence in the payment timetable in the payment timetable and that we will do what we say there must be no repeat no repeat of the problems that were faced in 2015-16 Can the minister honestly say that he has delivered his promise Can any observer say that the government has delivered on his promises I wonder whether there are farmers and the Scottish taxpayer will agree Millions paid out in fines for payment errors with more fines of up to £60 million on the way for missing this year's deadline for payments A deadline which is only nine days away Thank you very much Mr Rumbles I now call Jimmie Halcro Johnston to be followed by Emma Harper This is Mr Halcro Johnston's first speech in the Scottish Parliament and we welcome you to it Thank you very much Can I declare an interest as a partner in the farming business of Jay Halcro Johnston and Sons as well as the owner of a croft It's with great pride that I made my maiden speech as a member of this Parliament and as a representative of the Highlands and Islands to my own home of Orkney I'm particularly delighted that my parents have been able to make it here today They have experienced, as I'm sure the families of all politicians do the highs and lows of my political involvement just as much as I have and they've always been a very great support to me It was actually my father who inspired me to be interested in politics and while we haven't always agreed politically as a member of the Scottish Constitutional Convention he was part of the process that led to the Scottish Parliament coming into being so proud now to be a member of the chamber that he and others helped bring about I'd also like to pay tribute to my successor on the Highlands and Islands list Douglas Ross, now the MP for Murray His fantastic win there is testament to the hard work he has put in first as a councillor and then as an MSP for that area and it's a clear indication of the esteem in which he is held by local people in Murray I know he'll continue to work hard for them as their MP and I'll avoid using the term rising star and accolade that a few politicians recover from I know we all expect big things of him in the future and I look forward to working with him in my new role Can I also thank David McGill, his team and all those who have helped myself and I'm sure I speak from my colleague Tom Mason as well in making us both feel so welcome today and yesterday While I'm a new member of this Parliament these surroundings are not unfamiliar to me and it's great to see so many familiar faces of MSP and Parliament staff Between 2003 and 2007 I worked as a press officer and advisor to various Conservatives of MSPs Ted Brocklebank, Brian Montieth Bill Aitkin, Mary Scanlon and Jamie McGrigor and I thank them all for the opportunities they gave me back then Can I also congratulate Mary Scanlon on her recent award of a CBE a fitting tribute to her contribution to political life in the Highlands and Islands and to this Parliament and also to Jamie McGrigor who was recently elected as a councillor on Argyll and Bute and will continue to serve his constituents When I last worked here they were very different times for the Scottish Conservatives the only wins we celebrated in Scotland were victories in the annual tug-of-war competition three years of undefeated champions testament to the hard work and dedication put in by our team and that was a team that of course included the late and much missed Alex Johnston Alex and his wife Linda were always with me as a young and candidate standing in his first election and I'm sad that I won't be able to serve here with Alex as my colleague always David McLeachie or David Petrie two other Conservative parliamentarians taken from us too soon The area I now represent the Highlands and Islands is vast the challenges it faces are many and diverse and even within the agricultural sector the needs of someone farming in Shetland or in Orkney can be very different to the needs of someone farming in Murray but a strong agricultural sector is vital for wherever you live in the Highlands and Islands even if someone is not directly involved in the sector they'll likely know somebody who is they're our friends, our family, our neighbours Scotland produces some of the finest produce in the world and the Highlands and Islands produces some of the finest produce in Scotland but that needs to be supported and nurtured it needs the proper transport links to get our food to market it needs producers to receive a fair price for their goods it needs local government and business to support local producers by sourcing and promoting local produce and of course it needs rural payments paid on time the Scottish Government's mismanagement of farm payments has meant real difficulties in the present and concerns for the future it's left some farmers with severe cash flow problems and put financial pressure on the agricultural sector in general the last few years have not been easy but I do believe there's a bright future for our farmers and those who support the sector and that is crucial if we want to attract the next generation to take up the mantle and be the farmers of tomorrow as an MSP I look forward to working with farmers crofters, representative groups producers and stakeholders across the Highlands and Islands over the next few years I'd like to finish on how I hope politics may change in our country last week saw the anniversary of the murder of Joe Cox the sentiments which have come to the fore since her death should be something we can all agree on politicians agree on far more than that in which we disagree I hope over the next few years we'll see a normalising of Scottish politics again where our focus as parliamentarians can be on the needs of our constituents and are on the constitution how working together we can do better for them thank you well said Mr Halcro Johnston I'll teach you about my pen on another occasion signal of one minute to go I call Emma Harper the last speaker in the open debate you will then move to closing speeches thank you before I begin I'd like to remind chamber that I am the PLO to the cabinet secretary for rural economy and connectivity and I'd like to offer congratulations to Jamie Halcro Johnston for his first speech 26 and a half hours since being sworn in according to my partner sitting next to me I welcome the opportunity to discuss the cap futures programme and to acknowledge the difficulties and the challenges that delayed payments have caused the farming industry we can't go back we must go forward and as the First Minister told chamber last week there is not a shred of complacency on the government's part with regards to tackling this issue and ensuring that the system delivers as farmers have a right to expect it to in 2016 a number of countries had problems with making cap payments on time so much so that the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development announced an extension to the deadline England went through its troubles with common agricultural policy back in 2006 and 2007 when it moved to a regionalised model according to a recent report by the Public Account Committee examining delivery of the cap in England there are still significant failings in that system the report concludes that EFRA has failed to assess the effect of delayed subsidy payments on farmers and has not done enough to mitigate the implications as noted in Audit Scotland's report the cap futures programme has operated in a challenging external environment as ECU requirements were not fully agreed before the programme needed to start additional system complications were created by decisions taken in the middle of 2014 to accommodate the industry's request to have three payment regions despite failings the cabinet secretary has taken repeated measures to ensure that farmers do not lose out financially application periods have been extended to help maximise the number of farmers applying and given them additional time to do so where it has been determined that meeting targets to pay farmers were not achievable the Scottish Government has taken steps to minimise disruption by making payments at the stages rather than waiting until the system was ready to dispense any money actually I've only got four minutes so I won't take any interventions less complex claims have been dealt with first to speed up the process and the Scottish Government used over £270 million of its own budget to pay farmers as speedily as possible by introducing interest free loan schemes clearly there is a lot more to do but I welcome the fact that the updated report from Audit Scotland recognises a wee bit of the progress that has been made and know that the Scottish Government will now carefully consider the findings in the context of the significant improvement activity that is under way as the cabinet secretary states in his amendment the biggest threat to Scottish agriculture remains the UK's departure from the EU withdrawal from the cap and the loss of membership to the single market as the SNP will also focus on protecting farmers post 2020 I think that is actually one of the big focuses we need to have is that this Government will protect the farmers in Scotland the involvement of representatives from across the UK at Brexit talks is crucial today the newly appointed UK rural affairs secretary Michael Gove was due to chair the EU transition forum where farming ministers from across the UK discussed the future of the industry after Brexit instead he decided not to attend I fully realise the impact that failings in the delivery of cap payments has had on farmers and in my region in the south of Scotland we have the president and vice president of the national farmers union who both farm in Galloway so I would like to end by reassuring the farmers that the Scottish Government is very flat out and that I will be continuing to listen and support the farmers if needed thank you very much Ms Harbour winding up, speeches are calling Jackie Baillie to close for labour four minutes please Ms Baillie thank you very much Presiding Officer and can I start by congratulating Jamie Halcro Johnson on his maiden speech and also acknowledge the contribution of his father to public life he has big shoes to film Presiding Officer I think it is safe to say but always willing to learn so I pay tribute to the NFU Scotland members in my constituency who over the years have tried terribly hard to educate me I now know the difference between tops and yows I have spent time on their farms I have grown to understand just how hard working and creative my local farmers have had to be over the years diversifying what they do challenging the supermarkets when milk prices have been less than the cost of production and working with really tight margins so they have my complete respect and they therefore do not deserve having others fail them and let's be clear this is the third year in a row that the IT system designed to make the payments has been in trouble and whilst the loan scheme put in place is indeed very welcome the reality is that it's only there because of the government's failure now I always listen very carefully to what Fergus Ewing says I know he inherited this mess but he may have a degree of sympathy and as we've already heard from others Fergus Ewing may be a man of few words but he makes them count in May 2016 he said on behalf of the Scottish Government I address three simple words to all farmers and crofters who have suffered as a result we are sorry let me follow that up he said with four further words we are fixing it a direct quote from Fergus Ewing he is first and foremost priority he told us that he would do three things complete the 2015 payments deliver compliance and minimise any financial penalties and to see the 2016 payments placed on a proper footing he was going to oversee and drive forward work to get things back on an even keel sticking with his fondness for brevity let me say three words to the cabinet secretary you have failed we have a follow up report from Audit Scotland which does not make for very positive reading the programme that originally costed £178 million now likely to cost an additional £33 million and with potential fines of £60 million and I think Audit Scotland was being unduly kind when they said to date the programme has not delivered value for money I think that passes as the understatement of the year the independent technical report issued by the government is shrouded in secrecy members of the public audit committee and the rural economy committee were given a private briefing but actually this should be available to the entire parliament to scrutinise and I know the cabinet secretary is trying to make that information available and today sent an email to both committees including that and that is welcome but given that the entire report is in the hands of the herald he should really consider full publication to this parliament I suspect, Presiding Officer, it's a case of too little, too late Can I conclude, Presiding Officer by saying that farmers and crofters have been unserved by this government and their mishandling of the CAPFUTURES IT programme there is a level of incompetence here that is breathtaking and farmers are no clearer about whether payments will arrive when they should in 2017 indeed, across a number of schemes the less favoured area scheme payments of £12 million outstanding the hill sheep scheme £6 million outstanding I could go on but I suspect the Presiding Officer won't let me so let me finish with the SNP do need to get a grip let me leave you with the words of someone I don't often quote we're talking about public money and people's livelihoods we need something far better that was Alex Neil in December 2016 and he was right you know me so well miss Bailey you in cabinet secretary five minutes please I've found this debate interesting difficult at times but interesting I would echo the congratulations to Jamie Halcro Johnston for his excellent dignified maiden speech I'm absolutely certain that he will make his influence felt in this place and beyond and not just in the tug-of-war team I've also listened with care to the contributions of members throughout the chamber and it behoves me to reply to the main points a cognisant of the fact that as Mr Finnie pointed out I will be before the rural committee next week as well responding as is my duty to individual questions and I think I have been as transparent as possible in attending the rural committee and answering its questions so let me first deal with the CAP IT programme and the issues that members have raised about the Audit Scotland and the Fujitsu report first of all I welcome the Audit Scotland report it underlines what I've said on many occasions that we still have work to do I have been transparent about that and I point out information about the precise performance of payments that is made available on a weekly basis to the Parliament and rightly so the Audit General's report does note that significant progress has been made over the past year and I think it is reasonable that I narrate some of that progress in order to have a balanced record there have been, according to the Audit General significant and positive changes to both the leadership and governance of the programme I know that I ordered them the team has changed the governance has changed Secondly, there has been progress as the Audit General recognises on managing the contracts I have met personally with Steve Thorne in person or digitally through video conferences on numerous occasions I believe five occasions resulted in a 4.4 million reduction in costs to the taxpayer Thirdly, the Audit General recognises as I think Stuart Stevenson pointed out first in this debate that there has been increasing success with the online SAF application process that is functioning properly Next, we are making progress on payments as I alluded to in an intervention to Claudia Beamish 59 per cent of BPS 2015 payments made I should explain to any officer that in every year there is a tale of applications which for one reason or another cannot be met this year the tale has been bushier but there are always some applications that cannot be met but that is no excuse for not ensuring that our job is done and whilst Rhoda Grant credited me with Teflon which is an amusing phrase I don't shirk responsibility I intend to see the job through so we are making progress on payments but we are not there yet I also disagree with some parts of the report and I have made that disagreement clear to the Audit General for example on penalties and disallowances the figure of £60 million that is quoted is entirely speculative as the report notes just as the figure of more than double that quoted last year was entirely speculative I don't think I can I'm very sorry because I've got quite a lot to cover I'm very sorry I'll see you in committee next week Members have raised the Fujitsu report and I want to publish it in full I cannot do so because of the advice I've received that to do so with threatened cyber security I did reply and complied in full the approach that was suggested by Jackie Baillie as convener of the Audit Committee who said publish either a redacted version or publish a a summary of its findings and today we published a key finding so I have complied exactly well I'm very sorry I can't it's just time for that I can't reply but I can't because I've got more to cover Actually the cabinet secretary is in his last minute I have complied precisely if the letter from Papal convener is red with exactly what they asked me to do that report however does state that the IT architecture is fundamentally sound there's many more opportunities that we need to discover what happens in the event of a Brexit what about the points that Mr Finnie made that Emma Harper made about the real challenges facing the real economy what about the convergence funds due to Scotland, £190 million not passed on by the UK Government I raised that yesterday with Mr Gove and he is undertaken to reply to me on that but as my time is drawing to an end I apologise that I'm not able to answer all the questions I will do so next week as is my job but just let me say this that we are in the course of fixing it we have made substantial progress the technical experts report says the system is fundamentally sound it delivered 99% plus of the applications last year it proceeded with the applications on time it is proceeding and helping us to make loan payments which members have welcomed we are fixing it but the job is not done yet but I fully intend both to accept my responsibility and to see the job through thank you I now call Alexander Burnett to close for the Conservatives till 5 o'clock please are there abouts thank you Deputy Presiding Officer and can I start by noting in my register of interests around farming and confirm that I do not receive any rural farm payments before I come to today's debate on the failures of the SNP, the Scottish Government and Fergus Ewing surrounding cap payments can I welcome Jamie Halcro Johnston to the chamber and congratulate him on such a fantastic maiden speech he will be a welcome addition in standing up for our rural and remote communities and his presence due to the election of Douglas Ross to Westminster was a clear message of dissatisfaction with the SNP's performance in Murray a fact that must make our former cabinet secretary Richard Lockhead justifiably nervous given today's debate now on cap payments and here we are again a five-year project to cabinet secretaries and we are still no closer to a functioning payment system that summarised Rhoda Grant and Jackie Baillie which is why we will be supporting their amendment in the latest Audit Scotland report its conclusion was that we face risks of European fines as the system is not compliant fines can be administered for failing to make the required payments within set timescales misinterpreting or breaching regulations weaknesses in financial and administrative controls that are considered a risk to EU funds and there is a real risk of this occurring for a system that cost £178 million and managed to be 75% over budget to say that we haven't had value for money would be an understatement of course Audit Scotland had warned the Scottish Government then that this would not deliver value for money and unsurprisingly they refused to listen and as of the latest figures provided on the 9th of June 6,725 applications were still to be processed all of this leads to one thing additional costs we are left with a system that has merely been papered over as the structure of payments collapses underneath it farmers are still left without a significant amount of pillar 2 money from 2015 around £14 million worth is currently sitting in Bute House rather than in the Brock, Barrow or the Borders so whilst my colleague Peter Chapman opened with the Scottish Government is at risk of a £60 million fine in fines from the EU but the First Minister doesn't seem to be overly concerned why because that's enough for over 2,000 teachers for our rural schools which are crying out for staff we also heard today from Stuart Stevenson who as usual was more concerned with Westminster than the matter of hand we heard from Claudia Beamish who raised the important consequentials of his failure from businesses failing to the mental health of farmers a subject not nearly discussed enough and we also heard from Emma Harper who gave an acknowledgement that they will consider the report and I hope they do so soon because at the very earliest it is anticipated that the rural payment system will not be fully operational until 2018 meaning that this time next year we will be realising Mike Rumble's fears and having the same debate again asking the Scottish Government again if they have done any work into a penalties assessment asking the Scottish Government again if a pillar 2 payments have been met asking the Scottish Government again if it's had to paper over cracks again with short-term loans and Finlay Carson summed up the fiasco well our farmers and crofters are paying the price for this SNP's Government continued mismanagement but the problems are not just external as Peter Chapman mentioned we are now at risk of staff burnout staff are being put under enormous pressure for another year for shortcomings that had nothing to do with them the 2016 report found that IT division and programme team do not work as one an area that John Finney touched on administrative problems have also led to some farmers receiving duplicate payments valued at just under £490,000 adding a further administrative cost for recovery Presiding Officer it is clear the SNP simply doesn't care about rural Scotland and it is no wonder that rural Scotland sent them a message earlier this month their safer seats turning blue in order to put some proper pressure on this incompetent Government because when it should have been sorting this mess out its mind was on one thing only furthering their cause of independence so to finish Presiding Officer I would like to note what local farmers asked me about the First Minister they asked what will it take her for to consider her position on the matter and on the eve of the Royal Highland show it is certainly a fair question thank you thank you very much and that concludes our debate on agriculture