Virgin Media is putting a new cost on keeping some long-established email addresses. But is this the start of a wider change?.
Chancellor John Healey used his first Labour Party conference speech as Chancellor to set out an ambition for what he called a “new age of industrialisation”, with government spending, defence and British manufacturing placed at the centre of his economic strategy. For Scotland, there was an important announcement.
Walk through almost any British town centre and you can see the evidence of change. There are empty shops where there were once businesses.
If you think your energy costs are high now, the situation may be about to get a whole lot worse. With traffic in the Strait of Hormuz – normally the primary route for oil leaving the Middle East – hovering below 15% of prewar levels, oil prices have increased from US$65 a barrel before the conflict in Iran began in February 2026 to more than $100 a barrel in mid-September.
American universities have long attracted some of the brightest students from around the world. But international students considering studying in the United States now have another question to ask alongside tuition fees, accommodation and the quality of the university: how certain is my future once I get there?.
Will the Christmas Card Die This Year? Rising postage, fuel and household costs are putting another old Christmas tradition under pressure Will this be the year when the Christmas card finally starts to disappear?. Perhaps not completely.
Polling will take place on Thursday 1 October 2026 to elect one of five candidates standing in The Highland Council's Wick and East Caithness Ward 3 by-election. Voters are being reminded to make sure they are ready to cast their vote.
For households in rural Caithness, the heating-oil problem has suddenly become much more serious. Many people have delayed ordering because they can still remember paying around 66p a litre earlier this year.
Walk into a supermarket today and most shoppers probably give little thought to the small paper labels underneath the products. But changing those labels is a surprisingly labour-intensive business.
When the Chancellor increased employer National Insurance, it was presented primarily as a tax on employers. But in Scotland, there is another side to the story.
The Hidden Cost of National Insurance – How One Tax Can Work Its Way Through the Whole Economy When we think about National Insurance, it is easy to think of it as a tax paid by an employer to the Government. But there is another way of looking at it.
Chancellor John Healey is expected to tell the Labour Party conference in Liverpool today that Britain is entering a “new age of industrialisation”. That is an interesting message for a country which spent decades moving in the opposite direction, with manufacturing employment falling, major industries disappearing and many communities becoming increasingly dependent on services.
University Cuts Are No Longer Just About Staff – Students Could Pay the Price Five weeks of strike action at the University of Edinburgh has begun, following similar industrial action at the University of Dundee. Edinburgh staff represented by the University and College Union are taking strike action from 28 September until 30 October, covering five weeks at the beginning of the teaching semester.
For weeks there have been warnings that diesel could pass £2 a litre. Now it has happened.
When governments announce extra money for public services, the headline figure can be impressive. An additional £100 million for councils and another £500 million for the NHS or millions more for universities but....
There are increasingly alarming headlines about the possibility of diesel reaching £2.50 a litre, or even higher, in Britain. The immediate trigger is the threat of restrictions on US diesel exports.
A recent article from the Resolution Foundation asked an intriguing question about council tax in England: "My council tax is suspiciously cheap." It is a good question to ask in Scotland too. The Scottish council tax system has a feature that can easily be forgotten.
A new government-backed scheme is being proposed to help first-time buyers in England overcome one of the biggest obstacles to getting onto the housing ladder: finding a deposit. Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced the new Your First Home scheme on 26 September, with further details due to be confirmed by the Chancellor at next month's Budget.
Reports of contamination by so-called "forever chemicals" in parts of England are raising questions about how much is known about these persistent substances in Scotland. The issue has become particularly prominent in parts of Lancashire and Cumbria, where investigations have found PFAS contamination in rivers, groundwater and land.
The Government is bringing back a version of Help to Buy in England, but there is an important question hanging over the scheme. What happens when you give more people the ability to buy homes in a market where there are still not enough homes? The new scheme, called Your First Home, was announced on 26 September and is expected to be confirmed at next month's Budget.