The Scottish Daily Express leads with warnings from unions that Scotland is facing a “winter of discontent” if the Scottish government fails to resolve the councils pay dispute.
The Courier says waste workers in Dundee and Angus were on picket lines on Wednesday while schools could be forced to close if school staff take industrial action.
The Daily Record reports on warnings from Deputy First Minister John Swinney that the piles of rubbish building up in Edinburgh could pose serious health risks.
The Edinburgh Evening News reports that Mr Swinney said the Scottish government had already provided £140m to councils to fund an improved pay offer of 5%.
The Metro leads with Olympic champion Katie Archibald, telling how she desperately tried to save her partner Rab Wardell as he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest in bed beside her. The champion cyclist expressed her devastation after Wardell, a mountain biker, died at the age of 37 on Tuesday morning.
SNP ministers have been warned that pensioners are likely to die from fuel and food poverty during a “terrifying winter” for the Scottish NHS, according to The Times Scotland. Dr Lewis Morrison, a geriatrician who has led the British Medical Association in Scotland for four years, said there was a genuine prospect of increased deaths as elderly people will struggle to cope with the cost of living crisis in the colder weather.
“We’re paying higher bills, Ukraine is paying in blood” declares the Daily Telegraph’s headline, in its coverage of Boris Johnson’s comments. The paper says that while in Kyiv, the PM called for the UK’s allies not to waver in support for the invaded country.
“Labour’s money troubles deepen” says the i. The paper leads with news that leader Sir Keir Starmer is forcing his shadow cabinet to stop fundraising for their own offices to help with cash troubles faced by the party.
The Herald reports that North Sea oil and gas has returned to the heart of the independence debate after a leading think-tank said rising prices could see Scotland’s public finances look their healthiest for more than a decade. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the upturn in oil and gas revenues would cut Scotland’s notional deficit close to, or even below, the UK level next year,
The National leads with an economics expert saying the Scottish Conservatives claims that the latest Gers figures show “the highest Union dividend ever”, are a “fiction of the Tory imagination”. Prof Richard Murphy said Gers was “nonsense”. The 2022 Gers figures claimed Scotland had a 2021/22 deficit of 12.3% of GDP (gross domestic product), more than twice the UK’s deficit, which stood at 6.1% of GDP over the equivalent period.
The Scotsman says the government is facing mounting pressure to outline its renewed economic case for independence after Deputy First Minister John Swinney refused to confirm whether the Scottish government would rely on a continuing oil price spike in its renewed prospectus for independence.
The financial benefit of Scotland’s place in the Union has soared to a record high of nearly £2,200 for every man, woman and child, according to the Scottish Daily Mail. The paper says the difference between the amount raised in Scotland and public spending rocketed as the recovery from the pandemic got under way.
The Scottish Sun leads with Nicola Sturgeon’s appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe festival. The paper says opposition chiefs accused her of “self-indulgence” for a festival appearance in “midden” Edinburgh, where the city’s bin strikes didn’t get a single mention from the FM. Rather than addressing the growing “crisis” in the capital, Ms Sturgeon discussed her future, her “British” identity and Scottish independence.
Population loss is a very real problem for many parts of the Highlands and Islands, reports The Press and Journal. The paper says more remote places have been left with a dwindling and ageing population as many young people leave. Areas such as the Outer Hebrides, Argyll and Caithness and Sutherland have seen numbers fall dramatically over the past 40 years, despite the north as a whole increasing by 22%.
The Evening Telegraph leads with the death of a Scots woman who was given six months to live after she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Sophy Mitchell, 31, from Dundee, was told she was terminally ill after returning from a holiday in April this year. Her death was announced by her husband Kevin Mitchell who said he was by her side when she died at the Roxburghe House hospice on Wednesday.
The Evening Express reports on a court case involving allegations that a woman falsely accused a man of raping her in an act of revenge.
A “hard rain’s gonna fall” declares the Daily Star of Scotland. The summer weather is about to be interrupted, with some “filthy weather” expected, says the paper.
