| Modern Scot - 24/09/2026 · Issue 016 |
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 | | Policy and Government · 23 September 2026 Labour Joins SNP and Greens as Holyrood Votes 84–18 for Scotland’s ‘Right to Decide’ Scottish Labour joined the SNP and Greens to back the principle that Scotland has the right to determine its own future, producing an 84–18 majority at Holyrood. The vote does not authorise another independence referendum, but it creates a much… |
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| | Infrastructure · 24 September 2026 Oracle Invokes Force Majeure on Major US Project While Scotland Is Moving Government Into Oracle More than £51 billion in Scottish Government payments passed through Oracle Cloud in its first year. The platform now carries HR, payroll, finance and purchasing across central government and 32 public bodies, while John Swinney’s administration plans to extend its… |
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| | Policy and Government · 24 September 2026 Scotland’s Lost Citizens: 1,133 Drug-Use Deaths in 2025 as John Swinney Declares a Public Health Emergency Scotland registered 1,133 drug-use deaths in 2025, an increase of 116 in a year. The average person who died was 46. The deaths came during a year in which Scotland recorded its lowest number of births since national records began… |
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| | Infrastructure · 23 September 2026 Who Gets the Fuel First? Inside Scotland’s Plans for a Serious Supply Shortage As Scotland adapts to life after the Grangemouth refinery closure, the UK’s emergency rationing frameworks face a unique challenge north of the border. From massive rail fuel dependencies to a glaring blindspot in food production, here is who gets the… |
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| | Environment · 23 September 2026 PFAS Detected at Nearly 90% of Scottish Surface-Water Sites Sampled by SEPA Scotland’s first expanded PFAS scoping programme tested 29 compounds at 97 surface-water and 37 groundwater locations. PFAS were detected at just under 90 per cent of the surface-water sites and around 60 per cent of groundwater sites, but SEPA says… |
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| | Infrastructure · 23 September 2026 Accessible Trains, Inaccessible Stations Scotland says disabled people should be able to travel with the same freedom, choice, dignity and opportunity as everyone else. Its trains now meet modern accessibility standards. But the last national count found that 227 of 360 railway stations did… |
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| | Energy · 23 September 2026 About £104 Million of July’s Grid Constraint Bill Was Assigned to Scotland. One Scottish Workaround Saved an Estimated £39 Million NESO spent £221.2 million managing electricity constraints across Great Britain in July. Its monthly analysis assigns 47 per cent of that cost to its Scotland category, while a changed operating arrangement at a Scottish 275kV substation increased a nearby transfer… |
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| | Energy · 23 September 2026 ScotWind’s Scottish Commitments Rise to £25.6 Billion as Scotland’s Share of Project Spend Falls to 29% The latest figures for 16 ScotWind projects show more money projected for the Scottish supply chain than three years ago, but total project expenditure has grown much faster. Manufacturing and fabrication account for only 20 per cent of the commitments… |
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| | Environment · 23 September 2026 Scientists Will Search for the Peat Moss That Survives Drought A new £2.7 million research programme led from Scotland will search wild Sphagnum populations across Britain and Ireland for mosses that already cope unusually well with drought, then investigate the genetics, physical structure and even airborne chemical signals behind their… |
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| | Policy and Government · 23 September 2026 Scotland’s First Drug-Checking Service Opens in Glasgow — But Home Office Licence Restricts Who Can Use It Scotland’s first local drug-checking service will open in Glasgow on 5 October, allowing people to submit illicit drugs for rapid analysis and receive information about what they contain. But access will not be open to everyone: Home Office licence conditions… |
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| | Policy and Government · 21 September 2026 John Swinney Signed Scotland’s Local-Integration Reform in 2011. Now He Is Redrawing the System Fifteen years after putting his name to a reform programme built around local integration, John Swinney leads plans for two strategic health boards, fewer national bodies, six to ten regional authorities and 120 to 160 community authorities. The same politician… |
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| | Transport · 21 September 2026 Northern Scotland Enters a Week of Nuclear Security and Military Training An emergency-response exercise at Dounreay will close part of the A9 and stop passenger access at Georgemas Junction on 23 September, while military ranges across the northern Highlands have extensive live-fire windows during the same period. The events are separate,… |
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| | Policy and Government · 21 September 2026 The Great Consolidation of Scotland’s Public Bodies Scotland’s Public-Sector Reorganisation Now Reaches Local Government Scotland’s public administration is entering a five-year reorganisation affecting health boards, councils, environmental agencies, transport bodies, regulators, public records, corporate services and digital systems. A proposal published on 21 September has now added… |
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| | Economy · 21 September 2026 Scotland’s Supermarket Promotions Change on 1 October New rules will restrict where some foods can be displayed and how they can be promoted, changing supermarket entrances, checkouts, aisle ends and online stores while leaving the products themselves on sale. The familiar supermarket offer of buying several packets,… |
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| | Transport · 21 September 2026 Air Traffic Control Failure at Prestwick Disrupts Flights Across Scotland Flights across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England were delayed or cancelled after a technical failure at the Prestwick air traffic control centre, less than two weeks after a separate NATS system failure disrupted thousands of flights across the UK.… |
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| | Economy · 21 September 2026 Inside the Digital Kiosks Moving Onto Scotland’s Streets Planning applications across Scotland describe communications kiosks equipped with defibrillators and advertising screens. Behind that description is a privately operated platform capable of combining telephony, public Wi-Fi, digital information, commercial advertising and mobile-network infrastructure. On Wednesday, 23 September, West Lothian… |
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| | Heritage and Arts · 21 September 2026 How an Anglo-Saxon Coin Reached the Edge of the Norse World The Shetland discovery comes from an eroding coastal site already yielding evidence from the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Norse periods. Its precise ruler and mint have not yet been published, but earlier finds show English silver travelling deep into… |
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| | Heritage and Arts · 21 September 2026 Scotland’s Forgotten Dead: The Strange Things the Records Say Really Happened Long before Scotland’s haunted castles became visitor attractions, ministers, doctors, judges, councils and ordinary families were recording something stranger: funeral parties racing to avoid leaving their dead as churchyard guardians, murder victims being made to “identify” their killers, bodies moved… |
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| | Tea With Gunns · 24 September 2026 The Pothole Tea Club There are certain signs that summer is over in the Highlands. The swallows leave, the evenings draw in, Mr Gunn begins carrying logs into the house with the solemn expression of a man preparing for a siege, and nobody suggests… |
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