In partnership with

In your briefing today:

• We won’t learn until later today just how bad the situation is in Jamaica… but it has been pummelled by Hurricane Melissa

• A row has broken out over plans to house asylum seekers in Inverness

• Martin O’Neill is back in charge at Celtic, at least temporarily.

👋 Good morning Early Liners! Thanks for the feedback on yesterday’s roundup of budget commentary… it seems you overwhelmingly found that useful. So I’ll do that again before long. 😃 

📣 Jamaica has been pummelled by Hurricane Melissa although, as ever, details of the toll the storm has taken will take a while to emerge, given it’s now nighttime and electricity and telecommunications are down for large swathes of the country.

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness had declared the island a "disaster area", and warned of "devastating impacts" yesterday, with “significant” damage to homes, hosptials, and commercial property. (BBC - live coverage)

• A minister has said the parish of St Elizabeth is “under water” with families trapped in their homes (Guardian)

• Hurricane Melissa is now approaching Cuba as a Category 3 storm. It’s still regarded as “extremely dangerous”. (Guardian - live coverage) (AP)

• Scientists explain: Melissa is a beast among a string of monster Atlantic storms (AP)

📣 Plans to house 300 asylum seekers in Inverness, at Cameron Barracks, has prompted a backlash. Highland councillors and the Scottish Government have criticised the Home Office, saying the move threatens “community cohesion” and saying the impact on the Highlands “appears to not have been taken into consideration”.

The UK Government says the move - which includes another army base in East Sussex - will allow asylum hotels to be closed at a faster rate. (BBC) (Daily Mail)

• The Scotsman: Local concerns must be taken seriously

• Daily Record: “Too many politicians like to mouth platitudes about Scotland welcoming asylum seekers fleeing war – then object when Labour comes up with a sensible solution.”

📣 The Netherlands goes to the polls today, in an election that’s being seen as a test of populism’s grip on the nation’s politics. Voters face a choice - double down on Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration populism, or shift back towards more centrist politics.

Wilders led his party to first place in elections only two years ago and formed a conservative coalition, although his partners refused to endorse him as prime minister. He brought that government down in June over its refusal to adopt more hardline anti-refugee measures.

Opinion polls this time around show his party winning again - but only by a narrow margin. And, once again, potential coalition partners are saying they’ll refuse to work with him. (France 24) (Guardian)

• Chatham House: The Dutch elections are a chance for the Netherlands to regain its international influence.

Business news doesn’t have to be boring

Morning Brew makes business news way more enjoyable—and way easier to understand. The free newsletter breaks down the latest in business, tech, and finance with smart insights, bold takes, and a tone that actually makes you want to keep reading.

No jargon, no drawn-out analysis, no snooze-fests. Just the stuff you need to know, delivered with a little personality.

Over 4 million people start their day with Morning Brew, and once you try it, you’ll see why.

Plus, it takes just 15 seconds to subscribe—so why not give it a shot?

Check it out

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Scottish Government ministers have been sent allegations of corruption and financial and procurement irregularities at Historic Environment Scotland, the troubled agency that looks after Scotland’s historic buildings.

Five reports of alleged corruption - the details of which aren’t made clear, and are against an anonymous director - were received by ministers between July 1 and September 18 this year. They are set out in papers to Holyrood's culture committee. (The Herald has the exclusive)

📣 BBC Scotland is scrapping Good Morning Scotland after more than 50 years, to be replaced by a new show called Radio Scotland Breakfast. The new show, the Corporations says, will be “pacy, informal and informative”. (BBC)

• Scotsman: Replacement show has a lot to live up to

📣 More than 350 illegal workers were made across Scotland last year - up 30% in Scotland, and with UK-wide numbers reaching the highest level since records began. (STV)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 The ceasefire in Gaza is at risk of falling apart after Israeli strikes overnight which killed at least 60 people, including children, according to hospital officials. (AP)

📣 There are claims Prince William “pressured” princesses Eugeinie and Beatrice to encourage their father, Andrew, to leave Royal Lodge. The future king is said to have sat down with the pair and told them he would “re-examine” their titles if they did not ask their father to leave the property. (Independent)

📣 The migrant sex offender who was accidentally released from prison last week has been deported to Ethiopia. (Sky News)

📣 Donald Trump is continuing his trip through Asia and has met with his South Korean counterpart - but a trade deal appears “elusive”. (AP)

SPORT

⚽️ Martin O’Neill has taken over at Celtic after one of the most tumultuous 24-hour periods in the club’s history. By O’Neill’s telling, he was sitting having a coffee off the King’s Road in London on Monday morning when he got the call about taking over as interim manager. (Mail) (Daily Record)

• O’Neill says it’s “really sad” to see the breakdown in relations between Dermot Desmond and ex-manager Brendan Rodgers (The Sun)

• Who’s the next permanent manager? Ipswich manager Kieran McKenna is high on the list (The Scotsman)

⚽️ The SFA is to close its performance schools programme after a youth development review, partly blaming a lack of talent coming through. (BBC)

IDEAS
Columns of note: Non-crime hate, the battle over single-sex spaces goes on, troubled public enquiries, and “Third Culture Kids”

🗣️Murdo Fraser MSP asks why Police Scotland are still recording non-crime hate incidents (NCHI) - those incidents where someone has said or done something that does not meet the threshold for a criminal offence, but nevertheless cause the police to hold a record against the person involved.

“The police claim that this holding of data is necessary in order to compile statistics on the prevalence of hate crime,” writes Fraser, “but given that there is no objective test as to whether an NCHI should be recorded, it is hard to see what the value of such data would be.”

He quotes, approvingly, Chief Superintendent Rob Hay, who is president of the Association of Scottish Police Superinntendents and is calling for the policy to be scrapped.

Says Hay: “What was never anticipated was the current context of large-scale weaponisation of offence-taking and divisive culture wars, often playing out over social media. The potential for this to have a chilling effect on free speech and erode an already fragile balance of public confidence in the police is clear.” (The Scotsman)

🗣️Mandy Rhodes wonders why, despite the Supreme Court ruling eight months ago that “sex” in the Equality Act refers to biological sex and “woman” to a biological female, there’s such grudging acceptance of the law.

“From Lisa Nandy to Lucy Powell to Jenny Gilruth to Ross Greer – and of course Scotland’s former first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, because she is still an elected MSP – the reluctance to fully embrace both the letter, and the spirit of a law which is, after all, largely about protecting women, is obvious,” writes Rhodes.

She also takes aim at the public bodies which continue to argue against sex being defined by biology. (Holyrood)

🗣️ Magnus Linklater delves into events at the Sheku Bayoh inquiry, where Lord Bracadale has resigned as chair after decided - £25 million into his work - that “many of the core participants have lost confidence in my conduct of the inquiry to such an extent that it cannot be retrieved”.

His problem? That he had private meetings with the Bayoh family on several occasions, to hear their concerns about the inquiry’s direction. He felt his work would be “seriously undermined” if they did not have confidence in the inquiry, and engage with it.

The trouble is, that lost him the confidence of the Police Federation, representing the police officers who are also party to the inquiry, which is attempting to learn the circumstances of the death of Bayoh after he had been restrained by six police officers in Kirkcaldy.

“Why has it become so difficult, and why has the once broadly accepted solution of an impartial, judge-led inquiry been undermined?” asks Linklater. “The answer is that the direction of these investigations is now influenced not so much by those conducting them as by the victims and their representatives.” (The Times £)

🗣️ Novelist Kerry Hudson introduces us to a new term: “the Third Culture Kid” - children and young people who live some of their formative years somewhere that is neither one of their parents’ home countries.

Examples: Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, born in Zanzibar, lived in India, settled in England. Or Barack Obama, with a childhood partly spent in Hawaii and Indonesia, or Audrey Hepburn - Belgian by birth, raised in the Netherlands and England.

She has her own Third Culture Kid, too, currently being raised in Sweden, a member of “a growing phenomenon in an ever more mobile and globalized world.” There are benefits, she writes: her son is extroverted and speaks Swedish fluently.

But there are also the dislocations, practical, emotional and cultural: the price, perhaps, for an entirely unique view of the world as you grow up. (The Herald £)

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

Sent this by a friend?