Orkney and Shetland Islanders using the Northern Isles Ferry Services are set to benefit from the removal of mid and peak season fares from 24 March 2026. The Scottish Budget for 2026-27 committed to invest £1.8 million to remove seasonal fares for islanders using the services, meaning eligible residents of Orkney and Shetland will now pay the current low season passenger, car and cabin rates year-round.
More than 280 tonnes of used fishing nets will be sent from Scotland to Ukraine to help the nation defend itself against deadly Russian drone attacks. The used salmon farm nets had been stored ready for recycling but will now be sent to Ukraine following a request from its government.
For a generation, Britain has told its young people that university is the surest route to success. Classrooms became lecture halls, polytechnics became universities, and participation targets climbed toward the symbolic 50 per cent mark.
President Donald Trump's economic agenda took a major hit when the Supreme Court struck down many of his most sweeping tariffs. While Trump has options to restore some of the tariffs, he's losing his most powerful tool to impose them almost at will as a bargaining chip with other countries.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that many of Trump's sweeping global tariffs were illegal because he lacked the statutory authority he claimed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The Court emphasized that only Congress has the power to impose taxes and broad tariff regimes, not the president acting alone under emergency powers.
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the legal foundation of former President Donald Trump's sweeping global tariffs, the ruling sent ripples far beyond Washington.
Suggestions that Peter Mandelson may have shared government information with Jeffrey Epstein amid the fallout of the global financial crisis are being investigated by police. Emails between Mandelson and the disgraced financier, released by the US Department of Justice, are said to include market-sensitive details.
As Highland Council prepares to set its next budget in the coming weeks, one question matters more than any line in the spreadsheets. Are we being told the truth about what's really happening to our local services? Because across Scotland and especially in the Highlands councils are increasingly relying on a quiet, opaque tactic to balance their books: vacancy management.
The UK Government's changes to the taxation of second homes and holiday lets will reshape rural Scotland in ways that Westminster has barely considered. But while councils cannot control national tax policy, they can shape how their communities absorb the impact.
When the UK Government announced it would clamp down on "runaway" SEND spending in England particularly the spiralling fees paid to independent special schools. It was framed as a necessary correction to a system in financial freefall.
The UK Government's changes to the taxation of second homes, rental properties, and holiday lets may look like technical adjustments on paper, but in rural Scotland they will land with far greater force. What Westminster sees as a tidy fiscal reform will, in places like the Highlands, Moray, Aberdeenshire, Argyll, Skye, and the Western Isles, reshape housing markets, squeeze small operators, and expose the fragility of communities already struggling with depopulation, low wages, and a chronic shortage of affordable homes.
In 2025, The Highland Council launched The Reuse and Repair Fund, with members agreeing to secure £500,000 across a two-year period for community groups across Highland. Round 1 of the fund is now closed, with 12 projects across Highland securing funding, totalling £272,366.
Public debate about artificial intelligence in higher education has largely orbited a familiar worry: cheating. Will students use chatbots to write essays? Can instructors tell? Should universities ban the tech? Embrace it? These concerns are understandable.
January 2026 delivered a mixed but revealing picture of the UK's public finances, showing both short‑term improvement and long‑term structural pressures. Government borrowing fell compared with last year, tax receipts continued to rise, and some spending categories stabilised but debt remained historically high, interest payments continued to weigh heavily on the budget, and local authorities faced ongoing financial strain.
Nearly a third (31%) of trading businesses reported that their turnover had decreased in January 2026 compared with the previous month, which is broadly stable with December 2025, but has increased by 3 percentage points compared with January 2025; in contrast, 16% reported that their turnover had increased, up 3 percentage points from December 2025. Around one in eight (13%) trading businesses expect their turnover to decrease in March 2026, which is 7 percentage points down compared with February 2026, and the same proportion as March 2025; 21% of trading businesses reported that they expect their turnover to increase in March 2026, up 6 percentage points compared with expectations for February 2026.
The latest ONS figures on healthy life expectancy paint a stark picture of a country where people are living longer but spending more of those years in poor health. Between 2011-2013 and 2022-2024, every nation of the UK experienced a decline in the number of years people can expect to live in good health.
People with visual impairments will receive care closer to home through a new Community Low Vision Service (CLVS). Development work has begun on the new national service which will allow patients with visual impairment, that cannot be managed through glasses, lenses or surgery, to be supported by community optometrists instead of in a hospital setting.
After reading our article following ONS information - Healthy Life Expectancy in the UK: A Decade of Decline - that is somewhat gloomy we now look at how things could be improved. The recent decline in healthy life expectancy across the UK has understandably caused alarm.
January is always a strong month for government revenues, but this year's figures contained a striking anomaly. Capital Gains Tax (CGT) receipts jumped to unusually high levels, far above the normal seasonal spike that accompanies self‑assessment payments.
New surveillance, detection and investigative capabilities rolled out by Environment Agency to tackle waste crime. Waste criminals will be detected and stopped before they even get started, thanks to a new package of surveillance and investigative measures announced by the Environment Agency (EA) today (Friday 20 February 2026).
