Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
It was less licence to kill and more dramatic licence. Donald Trump’s claim that the late Sean Connery assisted him in getting planning applications passed in Scotland fell apart quickly on Sunday when the chair of the planning committee said the James Bond star was not involved.
In a series of tweets, two days prior to the US election, Trump paid tribute to Connery, saying he was “highly regarded and respected in Scotland and beyond”. It was announced on Saturday the James Bond actor had died aged 90.
The idea of a normal Christmas this year with large family gatherings is “fiction” and people should be “digital-Christmas ready”, Nicola Sturgeon’s public health adviser has said.
Jason Leitch, the Scottish government’s national clinical director, who regularly flanks Sturgeon in her daily coronavirus briefings, told BBC Radio Scotland it was too early to say what the situation would be in late December. But Christmas would “absolutely” not be normal.
The Scottish government is facing a fierce backlash after Nicola Sturgeon announced a crackdown on indoor drinking in licensed premises, as one leading adviser said more needed to be done to ensure people were sticking to the rules in their own homes.
Scottish pub, bar and restaurant owners expressed anger and despair at “catastrophic” and “scapegoating” new regulations that are set to last for 16 days across the country, and people on online forums decried the “prohibition” that would result from harsher restrictions in central Scotland.
The public are not to blame for a resurgence of coronavirus and have been let down by the government, Keir Starmer has said in a televised address following the prime minister’s broadcast on Tuesday night.
The Labour leader’s remarks pointing the finger at government incompetence come in stark contrast to Boris Johnson’s address, where he appeared to suggest that “freedom-loving” Britons would be to blame if more draconian restrictions were applied.
Household visiting will be banned across Scotland, as Nicola Sturgeon moves to limit a key driver of coronavirus infections before the winter.
While Boris Johnson’s statement on Tuesday did not include direct limits on socialising, Scotland’s first minister said she would be extending nationwide from Friday the ban on household visiting already in place in the west of Scotland, where she said the limits were already having an impact on escalating infection rates.
Rachel Reeves, Labour’s Cabinet Office minister and an ally of Sir Keir Starmer, has rowed back on her earlier calls for Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard to “consider his position.” She made that suggestion in an interview this morning. (See 10.09am.) But in a tweet issued some hours later, Reeves reverted back to the normal protocol which prohibits Labour leaders at Westminster from commenting on Scottish Labour’s internal debates and problems.
As I said repeatedly this morning, matters about Scottish Labour are for Scottish Labour. Keir, Richard and the whole of the Labour Party are determined to rebuild trust in Scotland, and take on the SNP’s domestic record ahead of next year’s elections.
Some of the best journalism on the coronavirus crisis has come from BBC Radio 4’s More or Less, presented by Tim Harford. But Harford, like all of us, does occasionally make a mistake and, in an interesting Twitter thread starting here, he explains how he got it wrong when he said the risk of dying from Covid-19 was the same as the risk of dying from a bath.
1/ Time for an apology and a correction. Seems that every newspaper in the UK is (correctly) reporting that I said the risk of catching a fatal case of Covid-19 is about the same as the risk of having a bath. I did say that, but I was wrong. Details below.
3/ Now according to this piece – the author of which should be held blameless – the risk of taking a bath is about 1 in 3 million (0.3 micromorts). But that can’t be right. https://t.co/6DBj7rv97W
4/ The correct claim is that the risk of dying in the bath PER YEAR is 1 in 3 million – 20-30 deaths per year in a country of 67 million people. https://t.co/MSJ6eP7k6S
13/ Covid is a killer. It’s killed 65,000 people in the UK, including a dear friend of mine. Don’t let anyone tell you different. But the daily infection risk from Covid is now low. People shouldn’t be terrified to leave their own homes.
First minister apologises after predicted awards downgraded more heavily in poorer areas
Nicola Sturgeon has apologised to tens of thousands of Scottish teenagers whose exam results were downgraded last week and promised urgent changes to their awards.
The first minister attempted to defuse a growing crisis for her government by confirming that her deputy, John Swinney, would lay out proposals to regrade results in the Scottish parliament on Tuesday.
Nicola Sturgeon has warned that an emergency lockdown in Aberdeen could extend to other towns in the region after health officials linked 32 pubs and golf courses to the outbreak in the city.
The first minister said all pubs and restaurants in the city had to close from 5pm on Wednesday, as she barred people from visiting other households indoors and urged residents to avoid non-essential journeys greater than five miles.
MPs who compiled the Russia report were incredulous at Britain’s reluctance to tackle Kremlin
In September 2015 a tall young man with jet black hair and a pleasant grin made his way to Doncaster. His name was Alexander Udod. With the EU referendum vote on the horizon, Udod was attending Ukip’s annual conference. In theory he was a political observer. Actually Udod was an undercover spy, based at the Russian embassy in London.
Udod chatted with the man who would play a key role in Brexit – the Bristol businessman Arron Banks. The spy invited Banks to meet the Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenko. What allegedly followed was a series of friendly encounters between Leave.EU and the Russians in the crucial months before the June 2016 poll: a boozy lunch, pints in a Notting Hill pub, and the offer of a Siberian gold deal. (Banks denies receiving money from Russia and previously stated his only contact with the Russian government in the run-up to the referendum consisted of “one boozy lunch” with the ambassador.)
The British government and intelligence agencies failed to conduct any proper assessment of Kremlin attempts to interfere with the 2016 Brexit referendum, according to the long-delayed Russia report.
The damning conclusion is contained within the 50-page document from parliament’s intelligence and security committee, which said ministers in effect turned a blind eye to allegations of Russian disruption.
Scots will be able to meet each other indoors and stay overnight from Friday for the first time in more than three months, as Nicola Sturgeon confirmed that the country was ready to enter phase 3 of her government’s route map to reopening.
Announcing a raft of new guidance in a statement to Holyrood on Thursday, she added that non-cohabiting couples would be allowed to meet outdoors, indoors and overnight without physical distancing, while children under 12 would no longer have to physically distance outdoors or indoors.
Justice secretary, Kate Forbes, among those asking for language to be prioritised
Senior politicians in Scotland’s Gaelic-speaking areas have called for the language to be given much greater priority in civil and public life to stop it dying out.
Kate Forbes, the Scottish justice secretary, and Alasdair Allan, a former minister, said Gaelic had to be given precedence or parity in all areas of public life and the economy across Gaelic areas of the Highlands and islands.
Scottish health board figures for tests on care home staff and residents reveal a “scandalous” postcode lottery, with significant divergence in how different parts of the country are coping with new testing policy.
Scotland’s health secretary, Jeane Freeman, pledged on 28 May to offer weekly tests to all 50,000 care home workers. Last Friday, after concerns were raised about the uptake of the policy, she sent a strongly worded letter to health board chief executives last Friday, telling them that directives were “not for local interpretation”, and that board-by-board data on the number of completed tests would now be published weekly.
Force of history demands re-evaluation of colonial statues and street names
Cities have always been about apportioning and memorialising power; about writing force into space. Britain’s colonial and imperial past is inscribed into the bricks and mortar of every city and town in the country. Mostly this hidden text of power relations and wealth acquisition lies dormant in the half-forgotten significance of street names, in the knotty iconography of grand facades, in the barely read inscriptions on memorials and sculptures, in the nomenclature of grand public buildings. Forming the backdrop of lived lives, these omnipresent clues are rarely fully decoded. The most monumental of sculptures has a habit of fading away to near invisibility if it is sufficiently familiar.
At times, though, such associations are activated and become urgent. So it has been in the case of the long-running affair of Edward Colston, who made his fortune in the 17th century from the enslavement of thousands of Africans.
The Conservative backbenchers Henry Smith has outraged opposition parliamentarians by saying that the objection to MPs returning to the House of Commons after next week’s recess (when the current, largely-virtual proceedings will end) has come from the “lazy left” and from “workshy” Labour and nationalist politicians.
Not that I should be surprised by the lazy left but interesting how work-shy socialist and nationalist MPs tried to keep the remote Parliament going beyond 2 June.
Henry this is an appalling thing to say, would you like to compare cases dealt with in this crisis? Hours helping with food, PPE, testing? Number of questions put down to ministers? Number of bill amendments written? Also calling people working at home workshy is quite something https://t.co/RROVCxbG7O
The government’s own public health advice has said that those who can work from home should and parliament has developed a system using technology to ensure the scrutiny of government whilst allowing people to work remotely.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, told the London assembly this morning that he is considering banning passengers from buses and tube trains in the capital if they are not wearing a face covering. He said that he was hoping to persuade the UK government, which is currently just advising people to wear face coverings on public transport, to toughen its stance. He told the assembly:
We don’t want confusion. When there is a crisis, what’s important is to have message clarity.
Scotland must adjust to the 'new normal' of living with Covid-19, which may include moving in and out of strict lockdowns at short notice, according to a document published on Thursday by the Scottish government, which sets out its framework for progressing beyond the current lockdown restrictions
Scotland’s chief medical officer, Catherine Calderwood, has apologised after she visited her second home in Fife in breach of her own advice to avoid travel. Calderwood was pictured on Saturday with her family taking a walk with their dog in the East Neuk, a picturesque area on the Firth of Forth about 45 miles from her main home in Edinburgh
Scotland’s chief medical officer has been forced to step back from public briefings after a furious reaction to news she broke her own rules to twice visit her second home during the coronavirus outbreak.
But despite mounting calls for Catherine Calderwood to resign from her position, Nicola Sturgeon on Sunday insisted that she would continue to play a key role in guiding the Scottish government’s response to the crisis.
Alex Salmond has been acquitted of all charges of sexual assault, a decision that prompted his allies to suggest he had been the victim of a witch-hunt within the Scottish National party.
A jury of eight women and five men at the high court in Edinburgh on Monday found Salmond not guilty of 12 charges of attempted rape, sexual assault and indecent assault after about six hours of deliberations.