In your briefing today:

📣 Defence secretary Wes Streeting has told the nation to stockpile three days’ emergency supplies amid concerns about cyberattacks, state-sponsored terrorism and other threats. Households should keep supplies of water, food, medical supplies, cash, passport copies and key phone numbers written down, he said.

Streeting, speaking at the opening of a new weapons factory in Shropshire, asked: “Are they [the British public] prepared for the eventuality that there may be disruption to essential supply chains caused by hostile state actors or terrorists? How would we cope if the payment systems of the supermarkets went down?

“Those are the sorts of everyday challenges and threats we could well face, and it is right we ask the country to be ready for those things and ask everybody to do their bit.” (Times)

📣 Weather warnings cover all of Scotland, as the forecast above notes, with the expectation that they could intensify over the weekend. High winds on Saturday night, into Sunday morning, could include damaging gusts, while the heavy rain could also be disruptive all weekend. (BBC)

📣 Ukraine has full-speed access to Starlink again after restrictions to the military-grade Starshield service hampered the country’s armed forces.

Donald Trump said Elon Musk had restored full speed; reports suggest Trump asked Musk to restore services after Musk had decided to cut it. Trump refused to be drawn on the detail, however, saying only: “Bottom line, he put it back”. (BBC)

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📣 Retailers are calling for the SNP's proposed supermarket price cap plan to be dropped. (Times)

📣 Hooligans clashed in Glasgow City Centre ahead of last night’s European match between Celtic and Celta Vigo. (Daily Record)

📣 Scottish Green activists are pushing for the legal recognition of polyamorous relationships. (Scotsman)

📣 Another Egyptian mummy - this one at the Hunterian in Glasgow - has been covered up after museum bosses decided she “deserves privacy in death”. (Mail)

📣 An extraordinary dispatch from France: David Chazan writes that Parisian shopkeepers and residents are arming themselves with self-defence weapons ahead of the weekend, amid fears of more riots and looting. (Times)

📣 The Duchess of Sussex’s estranged father, Thomas Markle Snr, is being investigated by police after a huge cache of child abuse images was alleged to have been found at his home in the Philippines by his son. (Sun has the exclusive)

📣 Israel may not survive the economic, political and social tensions dividing its society, US intelligence is said to believe. (Telegraph)

📣 Who will be the next James Bond? A shortlist of hopefuls will screen test this week, including Callum Turner and Slow Horses star Jack Lowden. (Hollywood Reporter)

⚽️ It was another chastening night in Europe for Scottish clubs. In the Europa League, Celtic took the lead against Celta Vigo, but a Rodriguez double - the winner a stunning strike from the edge of the box - sank them 2-1. (BBC) (🎥 Highlights)

In the Conference League, Mo Salah got a goal and an assist as a multi-million Trabzonspor side eased past Hearts 2-0. The injury-hit Jambos had to start a striker at left back, defending against the former Liverpool star. (Daily Record) (🎥 Highlights)

⚽️ Elsewhere, Crystal Palace earned a hard-fought point away to Beşiktaş in the Europa League (🎥 Highlights), and Bournemouth fans enjoyed one of the nights of their lives as their local heroes beat AC Milan 3-0 in the Conference League (🎥 Highlights)

📣 The Sally Rooney affair has been bubbling along for more than a week now: a row after the author decided to withdraw her books from sale in the UK because of her support for the outlawed Palestine Action protest group. Here are two contrasting views.

🗣️ For The New Statesman, the affair shows how laws meant to target terrorism now suppress dissent. “Designating a movement against genocide as a terror group was the first falsification of language,” writes Tanjil Rashid. “With the sprawling inevitability of the worst lies, the law has subsequently criminalised all expressions of support for this movement as terror offences too: this is the second falsification, for it is plainly not terrorism to hold up a sign.

“Rooney has been anathematised as a terrorist for pledging royalties to Palestine Action (this would be legal in Ireland, where she lives). This is the most egregious falsification: Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist. Yet she would be arrested in the UK. And were her publisher to pass funds to her, it would become, in the law’s eyes, a terror financier. This is the final falsification, making out that the venerable home of the TS Eliot backlist could possibly be equivalent to the Haqqani network.” (The New Statesman)

🗣️ But in a leader, The Spectator takes a very different view. It cites the terrible injuries suffered by Kate Evans, a PC assaulted last year by a Palestine Action activist with a sledgehammer, fracturing her spine. “A standard ‘Roughneck’ sledgehammer costs just under £40 on Amazon,” the magazine says. “Given Rooney’s sales figures, her generosity could allow Palestine Action to invest in several builders’ yards worth of demolition equipment.

“There has been some suggestion by the friends with whom Ms Rooney has conversations that the steps the UK government have taken to deal with this group, and its supporters, are somehow a wicked curtailment of liberty and a backward step for civilisation. Few people have had their liberty as curtailed in recent years as the crippled Sergeant Evans, and if we really want to see what a backward step for civilisation looks like we need only look across the Channel to France, where Palestine Action’s confreres have been turning the public square into a burning battlefield.” (The Spectator (£))

🗣️ Away from all that, the usually genteel Economist gets the knife out for the Chancellor in this week’s Bagehot column - a pseudonymous effort, named after the Victorian essayist but written, at the moment, by Duncan Robinson.

He poses the question: Is John Healey a “bald fraud”? The term comes from English football stands, he says, where fans use it to cast doubt on a succession of bald Premier League managers they felt had little to do with their sides’ success.

But that’s not really what he means here: what he wants to talk about is that people whisper that Chancellor Healey isn’t that clever. “While accusations of bald fraudulence in football are made publicly, in Westminster they are private. ‘Pedestrian’, say the kinder ones who have worked with Mr Healey. ‘Slow’, say the meaner ones. Visibly out of his depth, remarks a veteran of Sir Keir Starmer’s era. Ministers do not pay Mr Healey much heed. What is the chancellor’s theory of growth? Who knows, replies one. Should they bother to find out? The chancellor has little influence on growth policy, shrugs a member of the cabinet. The caucus crying ‘bald fraud’ is large.” (The Economist (£))

📣 The Spectator claims credit for the letter box, which it campaigned for 177 years ago. As it explains this week, “In 1849, nine years after the Penny Post came in, the Postmaster General mildly suggested that time could be saved if householders were ‘to provide a letter-box, except where the outer door is kept open’.

“Up to then the postman had to knock at every door and wait for it to be answered.”

“In its issue of 21 July that year, The Spectator thought the recommendation ‘ought to be enforced, and might be with little difficulty. Tax every recipient of a letter living in a house which has no letter-box, by charging him an additional penny on delivery of each letter.’”

These days, the magazine frets for the very future of the Royal Mail, and notes its place in British culture. “If Royal Mail goes under, it would mean more than simply blocking up our letter boxes and saving a draught in the hall,” writes Christopher Howse. “The postal service has a place in the nation’s hearts resembling the NHS.” (The Spectator (£))

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