In your briefing today:

📣 Victims of crime and their families are calling on First Minister John Swinney to tighten bail conditions for men suspected of attacking women, and scrap his plan for the early release of long-term prisoners. (Mail)

📣 The Scottish Greens will call for a hold on approvals for new large data centres in Scotland today, amid an ongoing backlash over the boom in planning applications for the vast buildings.

The BBC reports there are currently 23 projects in the planning pipeline, although experts think some of those won’t be built. Communities across Scotland have launched protests against the plans. (BBC)

📣 The report into the hospital where Lucy Letby worked has offered a “devastating” critique of its management, concluding that three babies might have survived had management and doctors acted on concerns about the nurse.

There was, said Lady Justice Thirlwall, a “complete failure” to protect babies at the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester hospital. (Guardian)

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📣 Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood says she will look to “reduce the pressure” on Glasgow as it struggles to house asylum seekers. She said other councils “haven’t stepped up to play their full part”, with the city home to many more asylum seekers than other UK cities including Birmingham and Liverpool. (Scotsman)

📣 Former Rangers player Nacho Novo has paid tribute to his stepson, who has died aged 26. Novo said he had been left “absolutely broken”. (Daily Record)

📣 New figures show Scotland’s civil service has grown by 1.1% in a year, despite a Scottish Government promise to reduce the workforce. (Scotsman)

📣 The Edinburgh Book Festival has enjoyed an “exceptionally strong year” with sales up 8.1% year on year. (Scotsman)

📣 UK inflation has risen to 3.1% in the year to August, figures released at 7am show. (BBC live coverage)

📣 Labour plans to make it harder for bosses to block staff from working from home. (Times)

📣 Elon Musk is training “his political chaos machine on the UK”, the WSJ reports, as he turns his support towards the hard-right Restore Britain party. (WSJ)

📣 All the supporting acts on Ed Sheeran’s tour, plus his backing band, have withdrawn in solidarity with fellow performer Macklemore, amid a backlash about his removal from the tour over his support of Palestine. (Pitchfork)

⚽️ New Scotland boss Sebastien Pocognoli says he won’t beg players to pull on a Scotland shirt, as he unveiled a debut squad containing no fewer than seven uncapped players. (Mail)

⚽️ Falkirk got their first win of the season against Hearts, beating them 2-1 with on-loan Derby midfielder Owen Eames scoring his first goal for the club. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ Another surprise, this time in Edinburgh: Hibs lost 1-0 to visitors Kilmarnock, easing pressure on manager Neil McCann. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ And I think we can call Aberdeen’s 4-0 rout of Motherwell a surprise as well: they were entirely ruthless at Fir Park. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ Goal of the evening? That’s easy: Dominik Szoboszlai’s thunderous injury-time strike for Liverpool, at the Kop end of Anfield: the cherry on the cake of a 3-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur in the League Cup. (🎥 See the goal)

🗣️ Helen Puttick’s been reporting on Scotland’s NHS for more than 20 years, and she’s noticed a change: the SNP has “banned constructive criticism” from within the service. “I witnessed with dismay the crackdown on NHS staff sharing their expert views,” she writes. “As the eye of the government turned blind, I felt growing frustration. But I did not realise how appalling some of the consequences would be.”

She cites a range of issues, from deadly infections in Glasgow to the acrimonious cases around gender identity, being “exacerbated by a culture that discouraged people from speaking up and, at the very least, frowned hard at those who dared to question.

“Lives appear to have been lost, and the known toll on mental health is, I suspect, only the tip of the iceberg.”

And there may be big problems lurking behind the omerta, she suggests. “I wish I could say that I had not recently been contacted about patient safety issues in other parts of Scotland, where people trying to wave red flags feel they have repeatedly been ignored. But this would be a lie. (Times)

🗣️ The SNP will be in power forever if Scottish Labour doesn’t pick the right leader this week, reckons Rebecca McQuillan. The results of the battle - if that’s the word - between establishment pick Michael Marra and heartland-hewn Joe Fagan will be announced on Saturday.

McQuillan doesn’t offer any clues as to who she’d pick, but says: “What the party can’t afford to do is to elect a manager dealing in retail policy offers, rehashing Tony Blair’s pledge card ideas, in an era of visceral identity politics and anger at the system. Endless criticism of NHS waiting lists and falling attainment isn’t enough.”

Neither candidate, she notes, is especially radical. And that matters: “Modern Scottish politics is painted in strident colours; it’s no place for the bland.” (Herald (£))

🗣️ Former police officer Tom Wood explains why young men are being drawn to violent, extreme right-wing causes, forming black-clad mobs in town and city centres to protest about immigration or indulge in the “usual” football-related and sectarian thuggery that has plagued us for generations.

“Many young men crave a sense of belonging,” writes Wood, “and if they have been failed by the education system, they are more likely to be beguiled by gangs or simplistic, extreme political messages from right or left.

“In the absence of something positive, we should not be surprised if disaffected young men flock to extreme causes which will serve their needs. For our leaders, this is a challenge. Remote working, a life on benefits, and incessant attacks on masculinity do nothing to serve the needs of many young men.” (Scotsman)

🗣️ Neil Mackay is unimpressed with fellow Gen X-er Andy Burnham’s early moves in government. The generation, he says, desperately wants to be hip. “Now the world is falling down around our ears and we’re panicking because somehow we’re finally in charge,” writes Mackay. “Burnham’s response is to promise a great ‘rewiring’ of Britain.

“To rewire, however, you must have a talent for DIY - you need to know how pipes and plumbing work, what goes where, how to avoid electrocuting yourself and blowing your home to smithereens.

“When it comes to Burnham, he’s about as capable at the DIY of statecraft as I am at the DIY of plain old home-improvement.”

Mackay is especially unimpressed with Burnham’s decision, in August, to reverse his opposition to capping political donations. And he’s unimpressed by Burnham apparently having “no idea how the union actually works” after his statement to the Commons that moved towards creating a mechanism for another Scottish independence referendum.

“Burnham - again Gen X to his bones - wants to be everybody’s best pal,” says Mackay. “He’s fundamentally a decent guy, it seems, so he wants to people-please. And he probably knows deep down that just saying no to another referendum is anti-democratic. So he shifted ground. Then he had to shift back. He simply ends up looking weak, stupid and incapable.” (Herald)

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