In your briefing today:

📣 Scotland needs an “emergency review” of its tax rates, according to Sandie Begbie, the Chief Executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise. The call comes after analysis found the SNP’s decision to impose a 48p top rate of tax was likely to cost the public purse £22 million in its first year, because high earners have taken steps to avoid sacrificing large chunks of their income. (Times)

📣 Wildfires in Greece have claimed the lives of three firefighters: two died after becoming trapped on Crete, and another died near the Peloponnese port town of Gytheio. (BBC)

📣 Russia launched a wave of missile and drone attacks against Ukraine overnight, hours after Volodymyr Zelensky warned of an expected “massive attack” by Moscow. Poland scrambled its fighter jets as the city of Lviv, close to its border, came under attack. At least 13 people, including two children, have been killed. (Independent)

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📣 Celtic failed to come up with a “viable” alternative to an unauthorised and ultimately violent street party in Glasgow city centre in May, despite months of talks with Police Scotland and the city council, according to internal police documents. (The Herald has the exclusive)

📣 The Scottish woman found dead inside a suitcase in Greece has been named as Elisabeth Jane Ross. She was found dead by a homeless man last weekend. (STV)

📣 The Scottish Government broke the law in its handling of complaints to the First Minister over a £1.7 billion age discrimination scandal that has seen thousands locked out of their full pensions for years, the Information Commissioner has ruled. (Herald)

📣 The Daily Record has been targeted by far-right protesters upset at its unmasking of some of the violent figures leading Italian fascist-style protests across Scotland. Featuring a comment from… er… yours truly. (Press Gazette)

📣 Businesses in Edinburgh are counting the cost of the fire in Princes Street - one restaurateur says takings are down 60% since the blaze. (Edinburgh Live)

📣 American forces have taken revenge for Iranian missile attacks on US forces earlier in the week, with a series of strikes against Iran overnight. (WSJ)

📣 A British Airways jet missed a landing at Heathrow Airport then stalled over London, in what is being called “the most serious near-miss in the UK in years”. The incident took place over Canary Wharf earlier this month. (Sun)

📣 The Reform UK funding scandal continues to unfold: the Guardian now reports that convicted fraudster “Posh” George Cottrell transferred more than $2 million to his mother, Fiona Cottrell, just before her 2024 donations to Reform UK. (Guardian has the exclusive)

📣 Donald Trump claims Andy Burnham will “open up North Sea oil” for drilling, making Britain “a really rich country”. (Times)

🏅 Call it Winning Wednesday? Scotland won eight medals in the space of just five hours on Wednesday - two of them gold - to take their Commonwealth Games tally in Glasgow to 23. Coverage is, this morning, both scattered and a little chaotic, but some sense of it is here…

⚽️ Rangers have named Lawrence Shankland as their new captain. (Mail)

⚽️ Calls are growing for European nations to boycott the World Cup over FIFA boss Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell off the tournament to investors for £15 billion. (Telegraph)

🗣️ It sometimes feels like Glasgow’s heritage is in a continual battle with bankruptcy, fire and complete apathy: the pick of columns and comment today brings you some perspective on that - mostly about “the Mack”, but with one cheering bit of news at the end.

🗣️ First, we turn to the future of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art. We have to delve behind the FT’s paywall for this - sorry, but gift links are impossible - to find Edwin Heathcote’s piece on why only a full restoration of this remarkable building will do. As you’ll be aware, the school’s trustees say that’s not possible.

That won’t do, says Heathcote. He points to the obvious example of Notre-Dame in Paris (which burnt in a terrible fire the year after the art school’s second, devastating blaze), where rebuilding was funded by donations from the rich and the general public.

He also cites Barcelona, where “its architectural patron saint Antoni Gaudí (a Mackintosh contemporary)” is treated with reverence, while his Sagrada Família basilica continues to be built.

For Glasgow: “No result other than a complete rebuilding will be enough here,” says Heathcote. (FT (£))

🗣️In the Times, Alex Massie concurs. “Either the building is as significant as everyone agrees it is or all that talk is just for show,” he writes.

“If it really is a masterpiece and a jewel in Scotland’s architectural crown, then it should be rebuilt and restored to its former glory.

“If it is not rebuilt like this, then we may judge that this country is so fundamentally unserious about its own cultural patrimony that it deserves everything it gets and then a little bit more failure just to emphasise its shortcomings all over again.

“A country so careless with its past scarcely merits much of a future.” (The Times)

🗣️In the interests of balance, I tried to find people speaking out about not using public money to rebuild this architectural gem. After all, the Edinburgh and London governments are hardly swimming in cash.

I found two counterbalancing (to an extent) voices: first, SNP MP for Aberdeen North, Kirsty Blackman, did at least question public support for a publicly funded restoration in a conversation with Bernard Ponsonby on Go Radio last weekend.

In The Critic today, Nicholas Boys Smith - a former Commissioner of Historic England - is also scathing about the governance of the school and its rebuild, and raises questions that would surely need to be answered before (limited, he argues) public money was poured into a rebuild.

“Lack of transparency from a body in receipt of public funds means that it is not possible to say precisely what has gone wrong since but over eight years the Art School’s management have done nothing beyond stabilise the ruins and argue with their insurer whilst construction costs rose and the real value of their insurance settlement fell,” he writes.

What should happen next? “The Scottish and, if they will not act, the British Government should transfer ownership by agreement, or legislation if necessary, to an independent Mackintosh Restoration Trust,” he argues.

Seed money might come from government, he argues, but not the full funding: that should be drawn “to Scottish business, the Scottish diaspora, charitable foundations and admirers of Mackintosh across the world.”

🗣️ Finally, some much-needed cheer: Herald food and drink writer Sarah Campbell gives Cafe Gandolfi the sort of fine eulogy usually reserved for the wailing-and-knashing-of-teeth after a much-loved institution closes: I had no idea of some of the history of the place.

Happily, she also reports that rumours it was on the brink of closing appear wide of the mark… although what, exactly, is happening with its parent company’s finances isn’t clear. I hope they’re seeing a boom in trade as a result of all the publicity. (Herald)

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