🚨 The Times Business Pages: The UK has lost ��74 billion in goods exports since Brexit.
Key sectors like cars, pharmaceuticals and advanced manufacturing have been hit hardest.
Exporters say the new trade barriers have made things significantly harder.
British food exports are down 22% (£4 billion)
Food is one of Brexit’s biggest losers: more red tape, lost EU markets, and cheaper imports undercutting our farmers.
Ten years on, the data continues to show a clear net loss, not the global trading powerhouse we were promised.
Scotland has at least 7 times as many district nurses per head of population as England does but RCN prefers to attack NHS Scotland on that https://t.co/fLLxMV59yT
Starmer claims his greatest legacy is on child poverty - lifting the two child benefit cap.
A reminder: he was against lifting the cap. He punished Labour MPs who voted to lift it. They forced him to U turn.
The Scottish Government didn’t need to be forced into any U turn.
BREAKING: The SNP will introduce a bill in Westminster to devolve independence referendum powers to Holyrood.
🗣️ 'It's time we take the power out of the hands of Westminster politicians and put it into the hands of a Scottish Parliament.'
🧵 Why is Scotland suddenly facing 24+ hyperscale data centre proposals at once?
UK trade press just spelled out the actual reason and it isn’t Scotland’s tech ecosystem.
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The Scotland office has acknowledged the existence of documents pertaining to discussions regarding Scottish Independence and a Section 30 order. However, they have declined to make these documents publicly available. What is the rationale behind this decision?
When South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony, known as the “Elephant Whisperer”, passed away in 2012, something remarkable occurred.
Two separate herds of wild elephants he had once rescued made their way to his home at Thula Thula Reserve. They hadn’t visited the property in over 18 months. No one summoned them. No one guided them. Yet they came anyway.
For two full days, the elephants stood quietly near his house, as if paying their final respects to the man who had saved them.
A year later, they returned on the exact anniversary of his death. They came again the following year, and the year after that, as if mourning him like a member of their own family.
A beautiful and powerful reminder that the bonds of love, loyalty, and gratitude in the animal kingdom may run far deeper than we ever imagined.
A groundbreaking study has pinpointed a microscopic culprit behind the debilitating fatigue, brain fog, and other persistent symptoms of long COVID: abnormal, sticky microclots embedded with neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) in patients' blood.
These microclots—tiny aggregates of clotting proteins—are small enough to obstruct the body's tiniest blood vessels (capillaries), restricting oxygen delivery to tissues and organs without triggering obvious large-scale clotting events. In long COVID patients, researchers observed a dramatic ~20-fold increase (median 19.7 times higher) in the number of these microclots compared to healthy controls, with the clots also tending to be larger.
What sets this finding apart is the discovery that these microclots are structurally intertwined with NETs—web-like structures of DNA, enzymes (such as myeloperoxidase and neutrophil elastase), and proteins released by neutrophils (a type of white blood cell) to ensnare pathogens. Normally, NETs form temporarily and then dissolve, but in long COVID, they persist and become physically embedded within the microclots, creating highly resistant, "gummy" structures that evade the body's natural clot-breaking processes (fibrinolysis). This creates a chronic thromboinflammatory state, where blocked microcirculation and ongoing low-grade inflammation may sustain symptoms like exhaustion and cognitive impairment.
The differences were so pronounced that machine learning models analyzing anonymized blood samples (via fluorescence microscopy for markers like ThT for amyloid-like structures, DNA stains, and MPO for NETs) could distinguish long COVID patients from healthy individuals with 91% accuracy—offering a potential objective biomarker for a condition that has long evaded reliable diagnosis through standard tests (e.g., normal D-dimer, PT/INR, or aPTT levels despite significant microclot burden).
This work, led by teams including Prof. Etheresia Pretorius (Stellenbosch University) and Dr. Alain Thierry (Montpellier University), reframes long COVID as a tangible, blood-based disorder driven by dysregulated coagulation and innate immunity rather than vague "post-viral malaise." Targeting NETs or microclots—perhaps with therapies to degrade NETs or prevent their stabilization—could open doors to treating root causes instead of merely alleviating symptoms.
[Thierry, A. R., Usher, T., Sanchez, C., Turner, S., Venter, C., Pastor, B., Waters, M., Thompson, A., Mirandola, A., Pisareva, E., Prevostel, C., Laubscher, G. J., Kell, D. B., & Pretorius, E. (2025). Circulating Microclots Are Structurally Associated With Neutrophil Extracellular Traps and Their Amounts Are Elevated in Long COVID Patients. Journal of Medical Virology, 97(10), e70613. DOI: 10.1002/jmv.70613]
Last month, I wrote to the Labour UK Government after it chose support Russia rather than local energy jobs.
I asked how the UK Government was going to mitigate the devastating impact of its energy policy in Aberdeen. The reply didn't answer, so I have asked again.
When you have folk like Martin Gessler, James Cook, Connor Gillies, Paul Hutcheson, Chris McCall, Chris Musson, Glenn Campbell, Connor Matchett, Ben Borland, David Walker, Sarah Smith and David Wallace Lockhart, it isn't hard to see why…
GERS keeps telling us Scotland runs a deficit. This study tells us Brexit costs Scotland £30bn a year in lost output , and we're the worst-hit devolved nation. Scotland's fiscal position is measured after absorbing the damage of a decision 62% of us rejected.
GERS keeps telling us Scotland runs a deficit. This study tells us Brexit costs Scotland £30bn a year in lost output , and we're the worst-hit devolved nation. Scotland's fiscal position is measured after absorbing the damage of a decision 62% of us rejected.
£29m secret payout. £122m court order to repay. Gowns that failed sterility tests 103 out of 140. Michelle Mone lied about her involvement, then admitted it. She's not a victim, she's a symbol of VIP-lane corruption. Tories won't strip her peerage? That tells you everything.
a group of Scots donated $3,000 to Spaulding Rehab in Boston as a thank you for treatment they gave to Justine Kelly, an American working for Scotland who had a stroke and recovered at the hospital. What a people.