| Modern Scot - 10/09/2026 · Issue 014 |
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 | | Environment · 10 September 2026 A Grangemouth Factory Is Trying to Make Omega-3 Without Catching Fish SEPA is considering a permit for a new industrial process at Earls Road in Grangemouth that would produce omega-3-rich material from microalgae grown using by-products from Scotland’s whisky industry. The company behind it, MiAlgae, says the process can replace marine-derived… |
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 | | Environment · 10 September 2026 In 2017, Scotland Had 61 Salmon Stocks Rated Good. For 2027, Only 22 Are Left Scotland’s latest assessment of wild Atlantic salmon shows a ten-year deterioration across much of the country. For the 2017 angling season, 61 of Scotland’s assessed salmon stocks were classed as being in good conservation status. For 2027, only 22 are… |
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 | | Economy · 10 September 2026 Scotland’s Businesses Are Beginning to Worry More About Missing Customers Than Rising Costs Falling demand has become the most commonly cited main concern among Scottish businesses for September 2026, narrowly ahead of energy prices. At the same time, the share of firms reporting rising turnover has fallen sharply from the previous month and… |
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 | | Transport · 10 September 2026 Scotland Is Studying a Railway From Tweedbank to Carlisle. The Victorian Route It Would Follow Has Been Partly Dismantled for 57 Years. A new public survey opened in September as Scottish Borders Council and WSP began developing the case for extending the Borders Railway through Hawick to Carlisle. Up to £10 million has been committed to the business-case and feasibility process. The… |
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 | | Transport · 10 September 2026 Edinburgh Is Preparing to Spend Up to £2.9 Billion on Its Next Tram Expansion Edinburgh councillors are being asked on 10 September to decide whether the city should advance the next stage of its tram expansion. The full north–south scheme from Granton to the Royal Infirmary and BioQuarter is currently estimated at between £2… |
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 | | Infrastructure · 10 September 2026 Highland Councillors Were Asked on 9 September to Oppose a 173-Kilometre Power Line Highland Council’s planning officers have recommended a formal objection to one of the largest electricity transmission projects proposed in northern Scotland: a 173-kilometre 400kV overhead line from Spittal in Caithness to Beauly, with towers averaging about 57 metres high. Councillors… |
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 | | Infrastructure · 10 September 2026 Scotland Is Rebuilding the Giant Highland Dry Dock Created for the North Sea Oil Age In 1975, workers began removing 1.8 million tonnes of Torridonian sandstone from a Highland mountainside to create a construction yard capable of building one of the largest objects Scotland had ever made. Half a century later, rock is being blasted… |
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 | | Energy · 9 September 2026 Scotland Is Becoming a Giant Battery At the end of March, Scotland had 22 operating battery-storage projects with a combined capacity of 843 megawatts. Behind them was something much larger: 426 electricity-storage projects somewhere in the planning pipeline, with an estimated combined capacity of 41.8 gigawatts.… |
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 | | Energy · 9 September 2026 One of Scotland’s New Grid-Stability Machines Has Changed Hands A little-known piece of electrical infrastructure in Moray changed hands this week. Foresight Group says it has acquired the Blackhillock Synchronous Condenser, a machine whose purpose is not principally to generate electricity but to provide some of the physical properties… |
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 | | Economy · 9 September 2026 When a Publicly Backed Scottish Technology Company Fails, Who Keeps the Invention? PureLiFi was created from research at the University of Edinburgh, received Scottish public support over more than a decade and built an international portfolio of patents around transmitting data through light. On 2 September, the appointment of administrators was filed… |
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 | | Policy and Government · 9 September 2026 Scotland Is About to Rewrite the Map of Its Public Bodies The Scottish Government has begun a five-year programme to reduce a public sector landscape containing more than 130 national bodies. Transport Scotland is to return to government, four environmental organisations may be brought under one body, food regulators are to… |
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 | | Community · 10 September 2026 Rainbow City Taxis Pledges £30,000 as Aberdeen Arts Centre Fundraising Passes £279,000 Rainbow City Taxis has committed £30,000 over three years to the campaign to secure the future of Aberdeen Arts Centre, taking the amount raised by the £660,000 appeal beyond £279,000. The Aberdeen taxi company will contribute £10,000 a year through… |
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 | | Policy and Government · 9 September 2026 Scotland Plans 150,000 Apprenticeships. Parliament Has Reopened the Question of Where the Money Goes The Scottish Government intends to fund at least 150,000 apprenticeships over the next five years. As it prepares for that expansion, an older argument over the way apprenticeship money moves between government, managing organisations and colleges has returned to Parliament.… |
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 | | Heritage and Arts · 10 September 2026 Scotland Preserved a Roman Monument for 1,500 Years. It Took One Landowner to Destroy It in 1743. Until the middle of the eighteenth century, an extraordinary Roman stone building stood near Stenhousemuir beside the eastern end of the Antonine Wall. Known for centuries as Arthur’s O’on, it had survived the end of Roman rule, the formation of… |
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 | | Heritage and Arts · 10 September 2026 The Famous Mr. Buchinger In April 1723, a German artist named Matthias Buchinger was working in Edinburgh. He made drawings on vellum so intricate that some of their writing could barely be read without magnification. He produced religious texts, coats of arms and family… |
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 | | Tea With Gunns · 10 September 2026 Apparently, Backgammon is Fashionable Again I discovered on Tuesday morning that backgammon is fashionable again. I was having my second cup of tea and reading about the things fashionable people are doing when I came across the news. Backgammon, it seems, has returned to drawing… |
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