Highland Council-owned D&E Coaches has confirmed the acquisition of Stagecoach’s Thurso and Wick bus operation securing local jobs. This will protect vital services and strengthening public transport provision across the Highlands.
If you live in Caithness and heat your home with oil, there is probably no need for anybody to explain to you that heating oil is expensive. You have probably already checked the tank and you may even have checked the price twice, just in case the first time was a mistake.
Britain has just passed a significant milestone that could eventually affect the price of almost everything we buy. Average diesel prices have reached £2 a litre, according to the latest RAC Foundation analysis, while the RAC says the national average reached 199.18p a litre at the end of September, above the previous record set in 2022.
Britain's railways are preparing for another major overhaul of the way train fares are set. For passengers, the words “dynamic pricing” may immediately suggest the airline model, where the price of a seat can rise sharply as demand increases.
It is becoming difficult to open the news without finding another reason to worry about Britain's economy. Diesel has reached around £2 a litre.
There could hardly be a better night for the BBC to bring back The Celebrity Traitors. Twenty-one celebrities have entered the Scottish castle, where nobody knows who can be trusted and everybody is wondering who will be the next to disappear.
There is a much bigger question hiding behind the shock announcement that Syngenta is considering closing its Grangemouth operation and putting 377 jobs at risk. It is not simply whether the Scottish Government can persuade the company to stay.
A mortgage rate of 7.28% might sound like an American problem. It isn't and the latest jump in US mortgage rates should make British borrowers pay much closer attention to something that rarely gets mentioned around the kitchen table: the bond market.
The Highland Council has reached another significant milestone in the delivery of a replacement Corran Ferry, with the procurement for a new electric vessel. Funded through a £58 million investment from the Inverness and Highland City-Region Deal, including £28 million from the Scottish Government for the new electric vessel, £20 million from the UK Government and £10 million from The Highland Council towards landside infrastructure, the project will deliver a modern replacement ferry service for one of Scotland's busiest single-vessel crossings.
The Pentagon has just announced something that could prove more important than another new weapons system. America is creating an Autonomous Warfare Command, or AUTOWARCOM, a new four-star military command designed to accelerate the development and deployment of drones, artificial intelligence and robotic weapons across the US armed forces.
As the UK approaches the Budget, one phrase is going to be repeated again and again is “fiscal headroom”. Politicians, economists and journalists talk about it as though it represents money the Chancellor has available to spend.
There was a time when building a huge hydroelectric scheme in the Scottish Highlands was regarded as a remarkable feat of engineering. Dams were built, tunnels driven through mountains and lochs harnessed to produce electricity.
There is something about Britain's current diesel position that ordinary motorists could be forgiven for finding rather confusing. The Government is reassuring people that Britain has adequate fuel supplies and that there is no immediate shortage.
Wick has spent a lot of time talking about what has gone wrong. The empty shops, the changing High Street, the loss of businesses and public-sector jobs, the arguments over parking and the difficulty of getting people to spend time in the town centre are all familiar territory.
Dave BUCHANAN Independent 714 Julie CALDER Scottish Liberal Democrats Elected Stage 1 1,522 Charlotte GIBSON Scottish Conservative and Unionist 79 John GLEN Scottish National Party (SNP) 424 Iain RICHMOND Reform UK 283# No further preference 0 Remainder not transferred 0 Total 3,022.
There is a question that is increasingly being asked across the north of Scotland, and it sounds almost absurd when put in its simplest form. Why are we sometimes paying wind farms to stop producing electricity at the same time as Britain is looking for more electricity to power new industries? The answer is that electricity is not necessarily produced where it is needed.
First this is probably the longest article we have published - I think the extra length is justified here because the ownership structure is complicated and the article is educational as much as it is topical - Bill Fernie When most of us switch on a .light, put the kettle on or charge a phone, we probably imagine that the electricity is coming through something called "the National Grid". It is an understandable assumption.
Scotland has a pot of money worth hundreds of millions of pounds sitting on deposit. It came from the development rights for Scotland's offshore wind industry.
We should perhaps stop asking who is winning the war with Iran and start asking a much more uncomfortable question. What happens if nobody can end it? The war has now entered its eighth month.
When the cost of living is rising, telling people to save money can sound almost ridiculous. If the household budget is already being squeezed by energy bills, food prices, fuel, council tax and other rising costs, where exactly is the spare money supposed to come from? Yet perhaps that is precisely why we should be talking about saving.