In your briefing today:

📣 The UK government has approved the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea later today, a hugely controversial move which comes after years of legal challenges by environmental campaigners. Another decision - on the Rosebank oil field off Shetland, which remains Britain’s largest untapped oil reserve - has not been made yet, however.

The argument about the two developments has become symbolic of the government’s attitude towards the oil and gas industry, and its green targets, with campaigners on both sides arguing approval - or rejection - was vital for the future of the country. Labour had promised, in its election manifesto, to honour existing developments such as Jackdaw - but not approve new development.

The government made the announcement at 7am this morning, with Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh to address MPs in the afternoon. (BBC)

📣 The BBC is to close the BBC Scotland TV channel as part of its drive to cut £500 million in costs. The TV channel will “move online” - meaning some of its programming will continue to exist on the iPlayer service - but the channel will disappear from programme guides on linear TV schedules. (BBC)

The move is being viewed as a significant retreat from programming for Scotland by the Corporation, although viewing figures for the channel - launched in 2019 - were always regarded as disappointing.

Mairi McAllan, the Scottish culture secretary, described the cuts as “wholly unacceptable” and said the SNP would fight to keep the Scottish channel going. (Times)

📣 Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of the military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine, a decision that sparked panic in Kyiv and a sharp rebuke from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. The move rendered some of Ukraine’s missile systems ineffective.

Who, exactly, had made the decision had previously been unclear: it now appears it was made by Musk, in conjunction with the US government. (WSJ has the exclusive)

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📣 School attendances fell sharply yesterday after bomb hoaxes were sent to schools across Scotland on Monday. (Daily Record)

📣 Hundreds of holiday let properties are operating in Edinburgh despite being refused planning permission, housing campaigners claim. (BBC)

📣 A couple have lost a legal battle to win damages from a whisky distiller over claims the “angel’s share” evaporation from maturing whisky was affecting their home. (STV)

📣 Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is “fighting a rearguard action” to save her migration reforms in the face of mounting public criticism from cabinet colleagues. (Times)

📣 Matt Hancock's claim to have thrown a "protective ring" around care homes where tens of thousands of people died with Covid has been dubbed a "cruel lie" after the Covid-19 Inquiry found people in care homes were “something of an afterthought” in the crisis. (Mirror)

📣 The death of a 14-year-old schoolgirl after TikTok served her suicide content has prompted fresh calls for regulators to crack down on “toxic” social media. (Guardian)

📣 The husband of the Australian MP attacked outside her constituency office by a driver says she had to have both legs amputated. (BBC live coverage)

⚽️ The TV deals for Scottish football are coming up for renewal… and there are hints that big changes could be on the way. The league has invited bids for TV coverage running from the 29/30 season, and says it’s prepared to be flexible on how many games are screened - meaning more could be shown live. In the past, Scottish football has tended to be conservative in how many are made available. (The Sun)

⚽️ In the Champions League last night, Scotland star Scott McTominay continued his return from heart surgery, scoring twice in Napoli’s entertaining 4-3 win over Bodø / Glimt. (BBC)

🗣️ Rarely have Scottish bus services provoked so much passion. When First Minister John Swinney announced that he wanted to bring them back under public control by 2031, in his speech to the SNP party faithful in Aberdeen last weekend, it provoked a furious response from Sandy Easdale, who co-owns the McGill’s Group.

“What has come over mild-mannered John Swinney?” the tycoon was widely quoted as saying. “He appears to have transformed into the next Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe, both men, incidentally, who bankrupted their countries through catastrophic financial policies.”

Those comments drew a sniffy response from the First Minister - “I think we’ve all got to watch our language in these discussions” - but it did flag a point of real difference. The people-pleasing policy of renationalisation (polls I’ve found generally show big majorities in favour of it) won’t be without its risk.

The Easdales, and other bus operators, are likely to do all they can in the courts to prevent… well, prevent what, exactly?

Well, maybe less Uganda, and more Greater Manchester, with its Bee Network of buses and trams. There, private bus companies still operate the actual vehicles: it’s just that they do so under one livery, on routes and timetables determined by the local authority, rather than what’s most profitable.

That allows services to be better integrated - buses with trams, for instance. Areas aren’t left isolated because they’re more sparsely populated. And, vitally, you can change the pricing - by capping fares, principally, making sure that if you have to take two buses to work (for instance) you pay only the one £2 fare.

That’s a system that’s worked well in London, which has long enjoyed an integrated bus, underground and train system with it’s Oyster card (capped) payments.

In Manchester, use of the buses is on the up (+14% since nationalisation): it appears to be a system that works.

In Scotland, a look through Transport for Scotland’s annual report paints a less healthy picture.

The five-year trend for bus use in Scotland is down (-7%), as it is across the UK (-10%), even if there’s been a modest (+2%) tick up in the last year. And, although much of the rhetoric around bus services in Scotland focusses on rural services, and the potential for communities to be “cut off” by failing services, taking the bus is very much an urban sport.

Moreover, the same annual report shows that, for all the Easdale’s anger at Swinney’s threat of public control, the state is already their biggest single customer.

The bus industry in Scotland took in £890 million in revenue in 2024/25. Of that, 56% came from the public purse - a combination of the £392 million in concessionary passenger support and the £107 million from local and central government. Ticket money from the public made up the rest.

Public funding is now 24% higher than five years ago, and passenger revenue is 5% lower - the latter number hardly a surprise, given falling levels of public use.

What all this adds up to depends, I suspect, largely on your ideological position on the subsidy of public transport. Columnists could make a case either way - for public ownership, because of the benefits seen in Manchester and London already, and the fact the public already pays the bulk of the cost.

Or, they could argue buses are already in decline, the public are voting with their feet: this isn’t as pressing an issue as politicians make out, and in these straitened times we should be looking to wean people off public transport only made cheap through the use of tax pounds. Bus operators say they’ve invested heavily in their services, too.

There’s also a centrist argument to be made that - if we think public transport is a necessary piece of social glue, and the state is already forking out most of the cost - the state might as well make sure it works for taxpayers.

What’s clear is the direction of travel. John Swinney likes to point out Scotland isn’t Manchester. But it’s that city’s success with integration that has been emulated across the North of England - and which the SNP would like to bring to all of Scotland.

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