There is a piece of economic news in the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics which, at first sight, looks reassuring. The cost of materials and fuels bought by British manufacturers has fallen sharply.
There is something particularly unsettling about a drought. At first it appears to be a straightforward shortage of rain.
There is an interesting twist to the UK Government's latest cost-of-living announcement: England is introducing a benefit that disabled people in Scotland have effectively had for years. The UK Government has announced that from 1 April 2027, eligible disabled people in England will be able to use their concessionary bus passes free of charge at any time of day, seven days a week.
There is a new electricity consumer on the block and it is potentially enormous. Bill takes a closer look at this big change that is already underway This new phenomenon does not have a television, an electric shower or a heat pump.
There is a price to war even when the bombs are falling somewhere else. That is perhaps the uncomfortable reality facing Britain and the rest of Europe as governments embark on one of the biggest increases in defence spending for generations.
Brent crude oil has moved back above $91 a barrel, and the question now being asked by businesses, consumers and governments is where does oil go from here?. The answer depends less on the normal workings of the oil market than it does on geopolitics.
Planning authorities will be required to notify Scottish Ministers of new data centre applications within seven days of validation. A new direction, issued by Public Finance Minister Hannah Mary Goodlad, applies to data centre developments exceeding 50 Megawatts (MW) power capacity.
There is something rather deceptive about the price of food at the moment. Walk into a supermarket and it is not immediately obvious that Britain is facing a potentially difficult combination of drought, poor harvest prospects, rising energy costs and an oil price that has climbed back above $90 a barrel.
The UK economy grew by 0.4 per cent in the second quarter of 2026, slowing from the strong 0.6 per cent expansion in Q1 in line with economists’ expectations, the Resolution Foundation said last week. This slowdown from our bumper first quarter continued a multi-year trend of growth coming in fastest in Q1.
Britain's labour market is not collapsing, but the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest something potentially more worrying for the economy: employers are becoming increasingly cautious about taking on staff. The ONS Labour Market Overview for August shows that the number of people on company payrolls has continued to fall over the past year, while the number of vacancies has slipped to a level not seen outside the pandemic since 2014.
In my previous article I suggested that Highland Council could perhaps take an Andy Burnham-style approach to the cost of living — looking at what it can do to reduce the everyday costs facing households rather than simply concentrating on balancing its own books. There is an obvious objection.
Andy Burnham has certainly been making his presence felt so I have ben giving some thought to how we could look at things more from a costof living view for residents of our region. Since becoming Prime Minister, his early approach has been to concentrate on the things that people notice in their everyday lives the cost of electricity, bus fares and some of the irritating practices that make household finances feel even tighter.
There is a figure in Scotland's local government statistics that deserves rather more attention than it has received. Scottish councils lost 2.65 million working days to sickness absence in 2023/24.
When the oil price rises, who really wins? There is something rather uncomfortable happening in Britain whenever the price of oil surges. For motorists, fishermen, farmers, hauliers and households heating their homes with oil, a higher oil price is bad news.
The stories making the news in Caithness are not just isolated events. Taken together, they reveal a county dealing with change in transport, politics, energy, housing, fishing, tourism and community life.
For more than a century, aviation has been tied to one remarkable invention: the jet engine. It transformed the world, shrinking continents and making international travel commonplace.
Britain’s pubs can be busy, football grounds can be full, and airports can be crowded while millions of people are still struggling to pay for life’s essentials. The cost-of-living crisis has not disappeared simply because some people cannot see it.
In this podcast, I am joined by my elder son, James, to ask a deceptively simple question: why do schools prepare young people for examinations but not for adult life? James describes arriving at university with a student loan and an overdraft, yet almost no understanding of budgeting, saving, rent, debt or credit. We discuss why this absence of financial education particularly disadvantages many young people.
There is something slightly uncomfortable about the way Scotland talks about road investment. Billions are being committed to transforming the A9 between Perth and Inverness, yet once we look north of Inverness, the conversation seems to become much quieter.
Young people, particularly men, are spending more time alone today than a decade ago, driven by a shift to solo working as well as increased screen time, according to new Resolution Foundation research published on Wednesday. All by myself – supported by the Economic and Social Research Council-funded (ESRC) Connecting Generations research programme explores how patterns of time spent alone have changed by age over the last ten years, and what explains these changes.