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In your briefing today:

• Civil service unions are furious over Scottish Government return-to-office plans

• Progress is being made in Ukraine-Russia peace talks

• A busy week of sport saw Aberdeen bloody league-topping Hearts’ noses, while a big win for Scotland Rugby couldn’t stop grumbles

📣 Civil service unions are accusing senior Scottish Government officials of a “pernicious right-wing culture war” against their staff over hybrid working policies after their demand that staff back in the office for 40% of the working week from last month, with Permanent Secretary Joe Griffin saying it was a “future ambition” to hit 60%.

Unions have condemned the plans, warning it will hit disabled and rural workers and impede productivity, rather than improve it. (The Herald has the exclusive)

• The Scottish Government’s wage bill has soared by £1 billion a year after a boom in promotions to the civil service’s middle management. Pay rises are wiping out other savings, after ministers promised to cut the workforce. (The Times £)

📣 Rachel Reeves is to promise millions more in funding for Grangemouth in the budget on Wednesday. She will announce £14.5 million to support the former oil refinery’s transition into a green industrial hub. That comes on top of £200 million already pledged from the National Wealth Fund. (The Scotsman has the exclusive)

• The Chancellor has been urged to avoid “death by a thousand taxes” by the head of the CBI. (Independent)

• Reeves “plots raid on middle-class pensions to pay for another welfare handout” (Mail)

• Reeves “to hit 100,000 properties with tax levy” - a revaluing of properties in bands F, G and H (Times £)

• Shona Robison is unhappy that the UK Government hasn’t held a meeting with the Scottish Government ahead of Wednesday’s budget. (STV)

📣 The United States and Ukraine are continuing talks today on a plan to end the war with Russia, after they agreed to modify the earlier proposal which was seen as too favourable to Moscow. (Guardian) (Reuters)

• Europe has offered a 28-point counter proposal to the US-Russia peace plan. It includes re-admitting Russia to the G8, as well as security guarantees to Ukraine that fall short of admitting it to Nato. (Sky News)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 The Scottish and UK governments are tied in knots over Mossmorran, inviting each other to rival meetings about how to support the closure-threatened chemical plant. (BBC)

📣 The “obscene” pay of University bosses could be reined in by MSPs. Scottish Greens co-leader Ross Greer wants to limit universities and colleges to limit the earnings of executives to no more than 10 times the salary of the lowest-paid worker. (Morning Star)

📣 BBC Scotland has launched its new breakfast show this morning: if you’re reading your Early Line before 9am it’s on air now. BBC Scotland Breakfast replaces Good Morning Scotland, which ran for 50 years. See ideas, below, for more. ⬇️ (BBC) (🔈Hear the show)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Lord David Cameron has revealed he has been treated for prostate cancer, after being urged to go for a check-up by his wife. (BBC)

📣 Senior BBC figures are to be questioned by MPs today in the wake of the Panorama edit scandal which prompted the resignation of the corporation’s director general and head of news. (BBC)

📣 The rare weather phenomenon that led to the “Beast from the East” is returning to the UK, the Met Office has warned. (Independent)

SPORT

⚽️ No matter their form against smaller sides, Aberdeen always manage to be a prickly test for title contenders, as Hearts discovered yesterday. The league leaders lost their unbeaten record at Pittodrie in a 1-0 defeat: a statement win that Jimmy Thelin says shows his real Aberdeen side. (Daily Record)

• Derek McInnes says he’s confident that first Hearts loss won’t cause a collapse (Daily Record)

🏉 It’s been a tricky week for Scottish rugby, and the 56-0 win over Tonga at Murrayfield yesterday has only gone so far to quieten critics. Captain Sione Tuipulotu says it’s vital the squad regroups in the new year for the Six Nations “in red-hot form”. (Scotsman)

• Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend bit back at criticism by speaking of “an entitlement” around Scotland’s failure to beat the All Blacks and Argentina. “These are top-quality teams,” he told the BBC. “We have no right to beat any team.”

⚽️ Scott McTominay followed up his Scotland heroics by getting an assist in Napoli’s 3-1 win over Atalanta. (Scotsman)

⚽️ Arsenal’s Eberechi Eze bagged a brilliant hat trick in the North London derby yesterday afternoon, and Danny Murphy echoed my own thoughts last night by noting that nothing will be quite the same for him again. He’s reached stratospheric levels of fame, adulation and expectation. (BBC)

IDEAS
What we learned at the weekend: Doctor fumes at Covid amnesia | Scotland’s new breakfast guest | Well-off plea to Reeves | English rail fares frozen | Pressure on Andrew

🗣️Dr Rachel Clarke is an NHS specialist in palliative medicine, and worked Covid wards during the pandemic. She writes powerfully in the Observer about the sometimes blithe reaction to last week’s Covid inquiry report.

She “gritted her teeth” as Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Conservative MP, accused the report of “just rewriting history”, adding that the claim of 23,000 excess deaths in England caused by a week of government vacillation in March 2020 “sounds to me not right”.

“If hindsight is what troubles Sir Geoffrey, perhaps I can refer him to the slew of tweets, interviews, quotes and articles from NHS staff from that time,” writes Clarke. “Because for those of us who witnessed the pandemic unfolding inside our hospitals – I treated patients dying of Covid – today’s collective amnesia about what happened is by far the more pernicious problem.”

She points to a piece she wrote on how to persuade your elderly parents to self-isolate for their own protection. Or another, also in the Guardian, where another doctor said: “The government has given up, hasn’t it? They are throwing us into the slaughterhouse.”

🗣️Scotland is waking up to a new breakfast radio show - Radio Scotland Breakfast has replaced the long-running Good Morning Scotland. It burbles in the background, all brightness and new jingles, as I prepare this edition of The Early Line. The dreaded demand for us to “be part of the conversation” was made within seconds of the start. There may be lots of voice notes from the audience. But it’s too early to judge - the first hour of GMS was, like today’s programme, always very chatty too.

But presenters Martin Geissler and Laura Maciver talked, ahead of time, to Magnus Linklater (£) about what to expect. And Alison Rowat spent a couple of weeks listening to Good Morning Wales - said to offer something of a template for its new Scottish sibling.

🗣️ Rachel Reeves delivers her long-awaited budget this week and the Sunday Telegraph chose to highlight a demographic - a member of the top 5%, earning £125,000 a year - who pled: “I cannot take any more tax rises”.

The anonymous reader says in a letter: “I am the definition of a working person that you claim to protect. I was raised on a council estate and educated in the state system. I entered the workforce at the age of 21 and have worked tirelessly and continuously for more than three decades.”

“Your upcoming Budget appears to target me with an almost surgical precision. Nearly everything that has been briefed to the press will impact my finances."

“Your message to me is clear: work hard, save, invest, aspire to support your family – and your broad shoulders will be punished for it.” (🎁 Telegraph - gift link)

🗣️Rail fares in England are to be frozen next year - good news for those living, or travelling, south of the border.

Except… they won’t all be frozen, points out travel expert Simon Calder. The government doesn’t control all the fares - only the regulated ones, which are season tickets in the London area, anytime tickets around big cities and “many off-peak return tickets on long-distance journeys,” he writes.

But - as in Scotland, where many rail fares have actually fallen this year - a break in the run of annual moans about tickets going up in price will be welcomed by many. (Independent)

🗣️Keir Starmer has “piled pressure” on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to give evidence to US lawmakers on Jeffrey Epstein, telling reporters at the G20 summit in South Africa: “Anybody who has got relevant evidence in relation to these kind of cases should give evidence”. Democratic members of the House oversight committee have issued a summons to the former Duke of York to discuss his “ties” to the disgraced financier, but he did not respond before their deadline. (Mail on Sunday)

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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