“There will be snow, snow, snow,” warned the weather forecaster, but she made no mention of the Borders. The best we could expect, it seemed, was sleet. All the same, it came as no surprise when the first flakes began to fall during breakfast.

A MAN who broke coronavirus lockdown rules by jet-skiing from Scotland to the Isle of Man has said he "did it for love".

SCOTLAND’S lawyer of the year has called for drug use to be decriminalised as part of the solution to the country’s drug deaths crisis.

A CURSORY glance at social media networking sites reveals the modern snake-oil of civic managerialism: leadership courses.

They love scallops in Oban. “We can’t get enough of them to meet demand,” smiles Carol Watt, whose family firm has been selling fish in the Argyll port for more than a century.

There is only one question that matters in Scottish politics in 2021: will there be a firm date for indyref2? And yes, I said something very similar last year, and indeed the year before that. The non-appearance of the independence referendum has ...

FORMER management of the shipyard at the centre of Scotland’s ferry-building fiasco have said ministers have lost millions of pounds of valuable orders – projects with “huge opportunities lost” – while condemning “highly irregular” a...

By Caroline Wilson

THE family of a man who took his own life after serving nine years in jail for a murder another repeatedly boasted was responsible have told of their despair in failing to get the First Minister to intervene to posthumously clear his name.

THE DNA profile of your husband or wife is influencing everything from how often you eat beef or oily fish to how much time you spend watching television, according to a new study.

PUBLIC health warning! That mawkish sentimentality so beloved of US actors, directors and filmmakers – have you seen The Midnight Sky, starring and directed by George Clooney, so saccharine your eyes will rot? – has infected the Sussexes.

Despite the rise in Covid-19 cases the roll out of a vaccine brings hopes for some of a better year ahead. But as Foreign Editor David Pratt reports there are others in parts of the world for whom it’s a very different story

At this time of year most of us look back and think about the past.

It should be called The Traitors’ Club. It opens in the cloisters of Cambridge University, moving to the bustling insides of spy central, Century House beside Waterloo station, and then to the elegant, cushioned, gentlemen’s clubs of Knightsbr...

ARE you fit? Or are you fit for nothing? I’m guessing that, at this time of year, some of you will be drawing up resolutions involving the dreaded words “exercise” and “more”, same as you did last year. And the year before that.

By Mark Smith and Alastair Stewart

By Helen McArdle

THEY love scallops in Oban. “We can’t get enough of them to meet demand,” smiles Carol Watt, whose family firm has been selling fish in the Argyll port for more than a century.  As a queue of masked shoppers forms outside her little mustard...

Even though Hogmanay was cancelled, the New Year has dawned and with a sharper mind than usual I wonder what lies ahead in the garden.

AS Scotland’s beleaguered tourism industry continues to weather the impact of Covid-19, could the prospect of converting some of our historic properties into high-end hotels benefit the sector and deliver a post-pandemic economic boost?

Saturday

A total of 2137 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the last 24 hours.

OUR HOPES FOR 2021

THE recollections of Ibrox, Heysel and Hillsborough are very different for Derek Pickup. He will never forget, though, as he prepares to remember once again.

THE old year now has passed away, as the hymn has it, and most of us will be glad to see the back of it. Seldom can danger and distress have seemed so near, but at least we enter 2021 with something – in the form of the vaccines – for which to be...

People in Scotland who were due to receive their second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine from next week have been told their appointments will be pushed back by months.

As many as 2,133 Scots may have contracted Covid-19 while in hospital over the course of the pandemic this year, figures show.

OFTEN, it’s been the essential virtues of our shared humanity which have made this Covid year bearable. Occurring alongside the increasing infection and death tolls have been individual human stories conveying kindness, self-sacrifice and compas...

AS the Bells chimed on the 31st, a Brexit trade deal that had barged its way through Westminster with some jingoistic bluster and very little else on Wednesday had already been formalised and the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Unio...

IT is now clear that UK’s the second wave of coronavirus began in July. Some experts have gone so far as to pin it to one particular day: ‘Super Saturday’.

I MUST confess it’s been disturbing how Covid has led many folk to start living the way that I have for years: working from home; never talking to anyone for days on

Residents in a Scots town have been told there is no need to panic after an alarm from a petrochemical plant sounded late on Friday.

More than 30 Glaswegians breached coronavirus restrictions to travel to a holiday home in Loch Lomond.

ScotRail paid out more than £1.1 million over a year, figures show.

SCOTLAND'S council tax debt mountain has doubled in size in five years as fears grow that the coronavirus pandemic will make a credit crisis even worse.

THE impact of the Covid vaccination programme on case numbers may not be seen until March, a Scottish public health expert has said, warning that a new and more concerning strain of the virus had “not really taken hold” yet in Scotland.

THE SCOTTISH Government has been told to back up climate emergency pledges with action and funding – ahead of the global COP26 conference being held in Glasgow.

Every year at this time I predictably start with the same sentiments. I don’t make resolutions for I don’t believe in tempting fate but I’ve now found out the hard way that fate gets on with its own business regardless of looking it in the e...