| Modern Scot - 03/09/2026 · Issue 013 |
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 | | Transport · 3 September 2026 Glasgow’s M8 Is Being Physically Lifted Off Its Supports This Weekend Engineers will close the eastbound M8 through central Glasgow for extended periods between Friday night and Monday morning while they jack part of the Woodside Viaduct away from the concrete structures that have supported it for more than half a… |
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| | Infrastructure · 3 September 2026 The Invisible Infrastructure Running Scotland’s Water Is Being Rebuilt for £230 Million Scottish Water’s new technology contracts began on 1 September. Behind Scotland’s reservoirs, treatment works and 64,000 miles of pipes sits another national network: thousands of communications links, operational control systems, cloud platforms and business applications. Two global companies have now… |
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| | Transport · 3 September 2026 Scotland Is Rebuilding the Gourock–Dunoon Ferry Link But Has Not Decided How Many Ferries to Build A programme intended to replace ageing passenger ferries and rebuild three Clyde harbours has reached an unusual stage. The original strategic case considered three new vessels. The Scottish Government has now confirmed that the number required for Gourock–Dunoon remains under… |
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| | Infrastructure · 3 September 2026 Glasgow Is About to Manufacture 100 Million Lasers a Year for the AI Economy A semiconductor manufacturing plant in Lanarkshire is being expanded to produce more than 100 million lasers a year. The components are measured on the scale of a chip, but they are becoming part of the physical infrastructure required to move… |
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| | Infrastructure · 3 September 2026 Scotland’s Railway Was Built for Another Climate. £400 Million Is Now Being Spent to Keep It Running Scotland is two years into a £400 million programme to protect its railway from heavier rainfall, landslips, flooding, coastal weather and higher temperatures. The work reaches back through almost two centuries of railway engineering and through the lessons of Carmont,… |
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| | Energy · 3 September 2026 Wind Turbines Are Getting Too Big for the Roads. Scotland Is About to Try a Different Design. A wind farm near Lairg will become the first project in Britain to use GE Vernova's Cypress turbine. Its blades can be transported in separate sections and assembled closer to the wind farm, addressing a problem created by the increasing… |
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| | Environment · 3 September 2026 Scotland’s Peatlands Are Becoming Financial Assets New restoration contracts appeared this week for peatland on North Uist and in the Highlands. Behind the engineering work is an emerging market in which repairing damaged Scottish land can create carbon units with owners, buyers, contracts and a place… |
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| | Environment · 3 September 2026 For Generations Scotland Has Burned Its Moors. From 15 September, It Will Need Permission. One of Scotland's oldest forms of land management is about to enter a new legal system. From 15 September, every act of muirburn in Scotland will require a licence, with additional restrictions where the fire is set on deep peat.… |
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| | Economy · 3 September 2026 Another Scottish Energy Company Is Being Sold Overseas Capricorn Energy has spent more than four decades building businesses from Edinburgh, from the North Sea to India, Senegal and Egypt. A new £292 million takeover by Norway’s DNO could now remove another independent energy headquarters from Scotland. Capricorn Energy… |
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| | Energy · 3 September 2026 Scotland’s £96 Billion Offshore Wind Pipeline Now Faces a Decision Made Beyond Scotland The National Energy System Operator has submitted six possible pathways for Great Britain’s energy system to government. Scotland has already leased seabed for one of Europe’s largest offshore wind development pipelines. The two processes are now meeting. On 28 August… |
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| | Community · 3 September 2026 Scotland Has a Migration Map Now. It Shows a Country Moving in Different Directions New population and migration material published this week makes it possible to examine Scotland below the national total. The figures describe a country in which population growth, ageing, migration and the loss of younger residents are distributed unevenly between cities,… |
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| | Economy · 3 September 2026 Scotland Is Preparing to Change Council Tax After 35 Years of 1991 Property Values The Scottish Government has confirmed that a Council Tax Bill will be introduced during the first year of the new Parliament. Two new bands for homes worth more than £1 million will arrive first. Behind them sits a larger question… |
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| | Policy and Government · 3 September 2026 Scotland Is Preparing to Put Legal Price Ceilings on Food, Potentially Selecting Imported Food Over Scottish Food The Scottish Government has now published the first detailed framework for statutory controls on the price of essential food. What began as an election proposal has reached consultation with draft legislation, proposed retailer thresholds, enforcement powers and an unresolved question… |
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| | Policy and Government · 3 September 2026 Scotland Is Building A Major Projects Office. What Will Change? The Scottish Government has announced a new Major Projects Office to accelerate nationally significant investment in housing, energy and other strategic sectors. Scotland does not have a shortage of proposed projects. Across the country there are housing developments waiting on… |
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| | Heritage and Arts · 3 September 2026 Before GPS, Scotland’s Coast Was a Map Made From Castles, Churches, Chimneys and Hills Before GPS, Scotland’s Coast Was a Map Made From Castles, Churches, Chimneys and Hills In the middle of the nineteenth century, sailors approaching Scotland navigated through a landscape that has largely disappeared from modern experience. Church steeples, ruined castles, coal-pit… |
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| | Heritage and Arts · 3 September 2026 Scotland’s Lost Kingdoms Left Their Art in Church Walls, Graveyards and Broken Stone Before there was a kingdom recognisably called Scotland, the country south of the Forth and Clyde was divided between competing peoples, churches and rulers. They left comparatively little writing, but they left extraordinary art. Around 200 pieces of early medieval… |
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| | Tea With Gunns · 3 September 2026 When Does a Visitor Become Taxable? I have been reading about the proposed Highland Visitor Levy, and I have questions. This will surprise nobody who knows me. I have questions about most things. I once kept a washing-machine engineer in the kitchen for forty minutes because… |
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