TODAY’S WEATHER

🌧️ We’re heading for a wet day across a swathe of lowland and eastern Scotland, with rain more or less all day in Glasgow, and heaviest in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. London starts out wet, too, but will get better towards the end of the afternoon. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Shocking report lays bare failings at NHS hospital | Reeves under more pressure | Starmer tells police to focus after Linehan arrest

📣 Nursing staff at an NHS Scotland Hospital left a dying man in “unnecessary pain" for three months, an investigation has ruled. The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman said Roy Owen, from Selkirk, who had prostate cancer which had spread to his bones and spine, was repeatedly denied pain relief while in the hospital for 24-hour palliative care.

The ombudsman’s report finds ward staff ignored advice from consultants and pleas from his wife, Ann. In addition, the ward ran out of pain medication, keys could not be accessed for opening the drug cabinet, and there were instances when Mr Owen took the wrong medication. (BBC) (Read the report)

📣 Britain’s borrowing costs have hit a 27-year high, placing Rachel Reeves under increasing pressure amid warnings that further tax rises will damage economic growth.

The rise in borrowing costs are high for many western countries because of Donald Trump’s trade war and political instability, and leave the Chancellor with reduced “fiscal headroom” as projections on the national finances are made.

Reeves is already contending with a £40 billion fiscal “black hole”, with the Treasury examining several options to raise the money in this autumn’s budget, including new and increased taxes. (Guardian) (The Times £)

• Cut spending to fix UK public finances, bond investors urge Reeves (FT £)

• Reeves urged to “get a grip” by former Treasury head (LBC)

📣 Sir Keir Starmer has told police to concentrate on tackling serious crime after Father Ted creator Graham Linehan said he was arrested at Heathrow over three posts on X about transgender issues. (Telegraph) (Guardian)

• Richard Kay: “Genius whose life was cancelled: the vicious campaign that robbed TV mastermind Graham Linehan of his career, his celebrity friends and marriage”. (Mail)

IDEAS
A viral image on asylum that’s so inaccurate, it undermines itself (and what it says about our asylum debate)

🗣️ Former MSP Neil Findlay shared this image over the weekend on Facebook. On the face of it, many of us might nod along: it’s a viral message that plays to a gut belief many that there’s something ugly and unfair about right-wing arguments against asylum seekers, while their rich and corrupt puppet masters are getting away with murder at the other end of the socio-economic scale. It’s very typical of its type.

Except… it’s utter bullshit, so much so I’d aruge the whole thing belongs in the “£300m a week for the NHS” hall of infamy. Dig beyond the vibes of the image, and into the facts, and despair.

Let’s break it down.

• Asylum seeker benefits cost £60m a year? That number comes from multiplying the amount a destitute asylum seeker gets - £7.02 a day - by the 23,135 who have that status today, times 365 days in a year. But that’s far from the main cost of asylum: we spent £5.3 billion in 2023/24 on the overall asylum system, with a lot of that cost down to asylum hotels. The right is “screaming” about the cost of those, in the main (we can argue separately about whether they’re making a dog whistle complaint or not. But it’s not the tiny benefits payments that has them on the streets). (The University of Oxford Migration Observatory)

• Benefit fraud and error costs £3 billion a year? Hmm… nope. Government statistics show overpaid benefits cost us £8.4 billion net (after recoveries) this year, about 2.9% of total benefit payments. (Gov.uk)

• Tax avoidance costs £90 billion a year? Nope. The most recent figure I could find - for the financial year ending March 2023 - was £1.9 billion. And, of course, tax avoidance operates within the letter - if not the spirit - of the law. Tax evasion is the one when you break the law - that cost £5.5 billion, and was mainly committed by small businesses. It’s accepted those numbers could be a more in reality. But £90 billion? That number was quoted by Zara Sultana MP five years ago, and appears to have little basis in fact.

• For what it’s worth, it also appears to underestimate the number of UK taxpayers when it’s working out the per-taxpayer cost. Divide the big number among 39 million taxpayers, not 30 million, a number we surpassed in 2004/5. Big recent rises in taxpayers are to do with the freezing of the personal allowance, which has dragged more people into paying income tax.

And so, we see that with a cursory amount of research, we’re in a situation where the claims of this pro-migration message are easily undermined and - in fact - could end up supporting the claims of anti-migration protestors.

In summary: we know the true cost of asylum seekers (£5.3 billion) costs us much more than (legal) tax avoidance, about the same as (illegal) tax evasion and more than half of the benefit “fraud and error” bill.

I know people will argue I’ve inflated the asylym seeker bill by refusing the image’s framing, which is benefits only, and instead taking the overall cost of asylum seekers. But I dare those detractors to say right wing agitators are angry about tiny personal payments rather than the huge cost of the asylum hotels they’re standing outside.

Moreover, I know some of you will think I’m doing the hard right’s work for them with a post like this. I hope I’m not. I just get irritated by BS, wherever it comes from.

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 A former economic advisor to the Scottish Government has warned it is “falling short” on policy and has yet to deliver on its promises of industrial transformation. Professor Marina Mazzucato, who works at University College London, says ministers had been “well-meaning” but implementation had been poor. (The Times £) (Future Economy Scotland)

📣 Senior Scottish politicians have called for MSPs to undergo disclosure checks before they can be alone with children. Alba’s Ash Regan and Lib Dem Alex Cole-Hamilton made the call after MSP Colin Smyth was charged with possession of indecent images of children. (The Daily Record has the exclusive)

📣 Lawyers for NHS Fife have attempted to change their case at the closign stages of the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal, in a move which could cause the case to run on for weeks more. (Herald)

📣 A man appeared in court accused of sexually assaulting a young boy during a family camping trip in the Highlands earlier in the summer. John Bell, 44, of Grangemouth appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court and made no plea. (STV)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 China put its military might on display on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping posing for pictures with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. (Sky News)

📣 Google’s feeling lucky: it avoided the most serious potential consequences for its core search business, a year after a US court found it had held an illegal monopoly over online search for more than a decade. (🎁WSJ - free to read)

📣 Under-16s will be banned from buying energy drinks under a planned new law for England. Some contain more caffeine than two cups of coffee. (BBC)

📣 What lies behind the alleged Russian GPS “jamming” of Ursula von der Leyen’s aircraft? Were there politics at play, as well as Russian interference? (Sky News)

📣 Switching off just one protein can reverse memory loss and prevent diseases including Alzheimer’s, according to new research. (Independent)

📣 President Trump has confirmed he is not dead or unwell, contrary to online rumours. Recently, he’s been seen with bruising on his right hand, and swollen ankles. (AP)

SPORT

⚽️ You might have thought the transfer season ended with the transfer window closing… but no.

• Striker Kelechi Iheanacho completed his move to Celtic late last night, making it just in time to get into their Europa league squad. (Daily Record)

• Aberdeen have signed Scotland international Stuart Armstrong, who was a free agent after leaving Sheffield Wednesday at the end of last season. (Daily Record)

• Speaking of Aberdeen, there’s a lot of excitement about their signing of Jesper Karlsson on deadline day. At least one pundit says he’s the signing of the summer in Scotland. (The Sun)

🏉 Gregor Townsend will lead Scotland into his third World Cup after agreeing a new contract, which will be announced today. (The Scotsman)