AN award-winning Scottish bakery is preparing to open its new store to local residents. Source

Paul Tritschler’s longform essay on hope and despair… The old man always made one room presentable. Apart from the milkman, the meter man, the insurance man, or indeed me (a neighbourhood message boy), there was rarely a visitor, but it was nevertheless his routine before opening the front door to close all others to conceal […] Source

The storms raging across Scotland are a reminder of our fragility to the natural world, or more particularly the unnatural one we’ve created. It’s become a cliche to talk of ‘climate change becoming real’, or ‘coming home’. but here it is. Here are your flash-floods, your landslides and sand-bags, your power-cuts and transport-system collapse. Here […] Source

One of our neighbours kindly invited us around to dinner, welcoming us newcomers to Shetland’s Westside. After a lovely meal, her 11 year old son invited me to a game of chess and I accepted with every intention of letting him win. But somehow, deep cultural conditioning took over and I beat him. Twice. Raised […] Source

WESTON View, which recently became part of the Parklands Care Homes group, is seeking volunteers to help provide more activities for residents. …

MORE authors have joined calls for the Scottish investment bank Baillie Gifford to cut ties with the fossil fuel industry. Source

DISABLED people are being hit doubly hard by cost-of-living crisis, a equalities charity has warned. …

UNIONS have already overwhelmingly backed industrial action in consultative ballots. …

TESCO is offering kids across Scotland free meals during the October half-term break … Source

WORKERS at a Scottish whisky distiller will vote on strike action after talks on pay collapsed. Source

We continue our series of featured writers looking this week at some fine writing from our vaults. We celebrate Khutso Dunbar, who has written a piece for Black History Month ‘Celebrating and Saluting our Scottish Sisters‘ ; Talat Yaqoob who has recently written on Russell Brand and the ‘culture of entitlement’; and Donna McLean who […] Source

THE majority of Scots voters back the UK Government’s decision to grant a licence to the Rosebank oil field in the North Sea, a new poll has suggested … Source

Here in Europe’s capital of human rights, I cannot demonstrate in support of the people of Palestine, that is forbidden throughout France.  On Saturday, I tried to attend a protest against austerity outside a shopping centre. The square was full of police, and the protest, along with others in other parts of the country, had […] Source