THE tiny Scottish island of Cumbrae has the UK’s smallest cathedral – and it’s just a eight-minute ferry journey from the mainland.

Located on the Ayrshire Coast in Western Scotland, Cumbrae, also known as Great Cumbrae, is just four miles long and two miles wide.

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It is perhaps because of its small size that Cumbrae is overlooked compared to other more well-known isles like Skye, Islay and Mull.

The island is home to just 1,500 residents, with day-trippers visiting Cumbrae from the likes of Glasgow in the summer months.

Despite its small size, Cumbrae is often regarded as Scotland’s “most accessible island” because it takes just 10 minutes to reach the island via ferry from the mainland.

Ferry company Caledonian MacBrayne operates a direct service between Largs in North Ayrshire and Millport, Cumbrae’s only town.

The seaside town is home to the Cathedral of the Isles, which claims to be the UK’s smallest cathedral.

Designed by architect William Butterfield, the Cathedral of the Isles was built in 1851, with worshippers flocking there ever since.

Hidden behind a cluster of trees, the cathedral is just a seven-minute walk from the heart of Millport.

Holidaymakers can learn more about the history of Cumbrae at the Museum of Cumbraes, which has a mixture of permanent and temporary exhibitions.

Located in Garrison House, entry into the museum is free.

Cycling is another key tourist activity, with visitors able to cycle around the entire circumference of the island in under two hours.

Visitors will be able to take in views of the North Ayrshire Coast and the Isle of Bute.

Cumbrae has a sandy beach that is popular with families, surfers and canoeists.

A large painted, plastic, crocodile sits on a rock at the beach, which is considered to be a good spot for crab hunting.

There’s also Newton Beach – an award-winning beach that’s said to have fine white sand.

Wildlife-watching boat trips also take place around the island with daily sightings of Seals, Oyster Catchers, Gannets, Cormorants in the surrounding waters.

Holidaymakers who don’t want to get the ferry back to Largs on the same day will be able to stay overnight at a handful of hotels.

Stays at the Millport Pier Hotel start from £90 per night, based on two people sharing a room.

There are plenty of other lesser-known islands to explore in Scotland.

OTHER ISLANDS TO VISIT IN SCOTLAND

Isle of Erraid

The tiny, and stunningly beautiful, Inner Hebridean Isle of Erraid is tidal island, just a mile square located just off the tip of the Ross of Mull.

For an hour or two either side of low tide, it’s linked to the mainland by a broad expanse of sand which you can cross.

It’s been home to a small group of members of the Findhorn Foundation for over 40 years after they were given it by Dutch owners the Van der Sluis’ to look after, on condition that for one month during the summer, they would return to enjoy the freedom and adventure of the island.

A small group of intrepid members moved to the island, restored the cottages and started a spiritual community. But Erraid’s major claim to fame is its inspiration for the famous novel ‘Kidnapped’ by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Foula

The island of Foula really is remote. Found 20 miles west of the Shetland and 100 miles from the mainland, it was known in Roman times as ‘Ultima Thule,’ which roughly translates as ‘the edge of the world.’ In 1936, the classic movie of the same name was made there.

So what do you get in return for making the effort to get to Foula? It’s not big, at just five square miles, but it is dramatic, with one of the highest sheer sea cliffs in Britain, Da Kame, standing at an impressive 1,233ft.

It’s home to around just 35 islanders, mostly crofters who make a living from farming the rare and colourful Foula sheep. Its old Norse name was Fugla-ey, meaning ‘bird island’’. It’s still a haven for sea and moorland birds, including Great Skua, which divebomb anyone walking too close to their nests, so be careful!

A Brit is the leader of a remote island in the middle of the ocean – and claims it’s the smallest country in the world.

Michael Bates became the leader of “Sealand”, a platform 7.5 miles off the Suffolk coast when his dad Roy died in 1991.

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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House

Republican Senate candidate Larry Hogan has attacked JD Vance’s refusal to acknowledge Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat as “crazy”, and warned it puts Republicans running for Congress at risk of losing their races.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Hogan, who is running for a vacant Senate seat in Maryland, said he is also concerned about the former president questioning the results of next month’s presidential election.

“It’s crazy, I mean, Trump obviously lost the [2020] election,” Hogan said. “I was the first Republican in the country to congratulate [Joe] Biden and to say to Trump that he should concede, and I was the first to send state troopers and the National Guard to the Capitol on January 6 [2021].”

At the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday, Vance, Trump’s running mate, was asked by Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick Tim Walz whether the former president had lost the 2020 election. Vance replied he was “focused on the future” and made allegations about censorship during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hogan, a moderate Republican who served two terms as governor of the traditionally Democratic state of Maryland, is one of the few members of his party who has been willing to publicly criticise Trump, particularly over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

He is running for the Senate in a hotly contested race in his home state that could determine the balance of power in Congress after the election.

Unlike other Republican candidates, Hogan has sought to distance himself from Trump’s Maga movement. He confirmed this week he would not vote for the former president in November, even though Trump has endorsed his candidacy for Senate.

“My message to Trump would be to focus on the issues and stop with the divisive rhetoric,” Hogan told the FT.

He has also distanced himself from Trump and the more protectionist wing of the Republican party on economic policy. The former president has proposed a 60 per cent levy on goods originating from China, as well as a 20 per cent tariff on all imported goods.

“I’m very concerned about the tariffs and I’ve said I’m going to stand up to Trump on areas we disagree,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good for our economy.”

The latest opinion poll from the Washington Post and the University of Maryland showed Hogan trailing his Democratic opponent Angela Alsobrooks by an 11-point margin. But the Senate race looks significantly closer than the presidential ticket in the state, where the same poll showed Harris with a 30-point lead over Trump.

While describing the presidential race nationwide as a “toss up”, Hogan said down-ballot Republican candidates may be in danger as a result of Trump’s polarising rhetoric.

“I think there’s a real possibility that [the GOP] could lose the House [of Representatives] . . . that’s why it’s important to have people like me in the Senate,” he said.

Hogan, who left the governor’s mansion with one of the highest approval ratings in the country, has pitched himself as a moderate and said he would support abortion rights as a senator.

But his opponent has warned a vote for Hogan would help Senate Republicans secure a majority in the upper chamber of Congress and either enable a second Trump presidency or stymie a Harris White House.

“The question is not whether or not we like Larry Hogan,” Alsobrooks said at a recent campaign stop in Columbia, Maryland. “The question we are answering is, who should have the 51st vote?”

As well as appealing to moderate voters, Hogan has to win the support of Maga-aligned Republicans who take issue with his anti-Trump stance.

“I’m going to convince them,” he said. “We haven’t elected a Republican [to the Senate] in 44 years from our state and I’m the same person they voted for overwhelmingly for governor.”

A MAJOR DIY and garden retailer has become the latest in a string of chains confirming it will close all stores on Boxing Day.

B&Q has revealed it will shutter its more than 300 UK branches on December 25 and 26 to give staff a well-earned break.

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The retailer, which stocks everything from garden products to kitchenware, tools and equipment will also close all its stores early on Christmas Eve.

Branches across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will shut at 4pm instead of the usual 8pm.

The vast majority of the DIY chain’s stores will also be operating reduced opening hours on New Year’s Day.

Its stores in Scotland and on the islands of Jersey and Guernsey meanwhile will be closed to customers on January 1.

Shoppers should use B&Q’s store locator tool to find out when their local branch is closing over Christmas to avoid a wasted trip.

You can do this by using the retailer’s “Find a Store” tool on its website.

B&Q is the latest retailer to announce it will be closing for two days over Christmas to give staff time off.

Home Bargains was the first to announce it would shut all stores on Boxing Day, as well as Christmas Day.

Aldi followed, confirming it would close its more than 1,000 branches for two days over Christmas.

CDS Superstores, trading as The Range and Wilko, has also said it will close branches on December 25 and 26.

Plus, John Lewis, Waitrose and Homebase confirmed they will shutter down all their stores on Boxing Day.

It’s worth bearing in mind, almost all stores close on Christmas Day every year, but a handful of retailers usually shut the following day.

Last year, dozens of chains across the country made the decision to adjust their opening hours to give their workers a well-earned break on December 26.

Aldi, Iceland, John Lewis, and Poundland all pulled down their shutters on Boxing Day.

While other opted to operate with reduced hours instead, including Sainsbury’s, Primark, Morrisons and Tesco.

We will keep you updated on the major chains’ plans for this year as they’re announced.

In any case, most retailers will have store opening hours on their website.

It comes after Kingfisher, which owns B&Q, said in March it would be expanding its B&Q Local format across UK high streets.

B&Q opened nine of these new stores in the UK last year and said it had plans to open more.

Good afternoon and welcome back to The State of Britain newsletter.

It was all rather overshadowed by the growing conflagration in the Middle East and squabbling at home over Sir Keir Starmer’s acceptance of freebies, but this week EU-UK relations took a small but important step forward.

After his meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday, Starmer gave a press conference (flanked with Union Flags, not a joint affair) at which he said simply “Ursula and I have agreed we can do more together”.

Regular readers won’t be surprised if we don’t get too starry-eyed about that statement, but after all the madness of the past eight years, the significance of the moment should not go unremarked upon.

As one senior EU official put it, the meeting doesn’t “wave a magic wand that makes the last eight years go away” but it does signal the start of “a conversation in a dramatically changed global context, between two like-minded partners, who have much to gain and nothing to lose by seeing where this leads”.

This wide-angle view, which seeks not to put too much pressure on the nitty-gritty of the relationship, is summed up by David Henig, the longtime EU watcher, as a move aimed at “stabilising, normalising and deepening” relations between the two sides.

Tough decisions

Hard to disagree with any of that, including the welcome news that both sides agreed that, not before time, there should be regular “leader-level” EU-UK summits. The first of these is slated for early 2025.

But to be clear, all of the above is the easy part. Indeed, the biggest threat is that politics on both sides of the Channel mean that the EU-UK reset gets stuck in the comfortable waiting room of an annual leaders’ summit, rather than both sides taking tough decisions that make a difference.

The joint statement between the two sides made clear that the (wholly inadequate) Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) remains the core basis for the relationship, while making no explicit mention of UK offensive priorities on a veterinary deal, professional qualifications or touring musicians.

The communique also noted that any moves to deepen co-operation in areas of the economy, energy and security would happen “in full respect of their internal procedures and institutional prerogatives”, which is Commission-speak for “no cherry-picking”.

That line also reflects the concerns of EU member states that any concessions to London must be squared with their own offensive aims on securing fishing rights in UK waters and freer access for their young people to study and work in the UK.

That, as we reported, was made very clear in the hastily arranged EU ambassadors’ meeting ahead of Starmer’s visit, which put clear markers down to the EU commission negotiating team not to get too far ahead of itself.

What this exposes is the gap between the politics on both sides and the demands of businesses impacted by a trade deal which — lest we forget — the Office for Budget Responsibility continues to say will lead to a 15 per cent long-run hit to the UK imports and exports.

Two weeks before Starmer and von der Leyen met, impacted businesses and society groups — represented via the external Domestic Advisory Group (DAG) that advises on the implementation of the TCA — set out a joint list of what they wanted to see improved.

It’s worth a read. Some of the ‘asks’ are about generally making better use of the specialised committees that govern the TCA and doing more to co-ordinate on Brexit 2.0 regulatory issues, like carbon border taxes and supply chain due diligence, that impact trade.

But other areas, like demands for a youth mobility deal and deeper co-operation on chemical data sharing (not really possible, according to EU internal documents, if the UK remains outside the single market) are already the subject of political and legal blockages.

Meanwhile, in the Midlands

This week I was in the Midlands on a reporting assignment talking to manufacturing businesses and it didn’t take long for managers to raise their concerns about the costs and frictions caused by the TCA.

One advanced manufacturer whose products feed into EU supply chains, explained how the frictions caused by rules of origin, customs and more recently the introduction of reporting requirements for the EU’s new carbon border taxes were impacting their competitiveness.

The company has kept its place in the supply chain due to the sunk costs, but is painfully aware that when it comes to future contracts, it will struggle to compete with rivals inside the EU single market.

The business, which has an EU parent company, also wants support from HQ to expand into a larger factory in the UK but isn’t getting any encouragement from across the Channel. “You can feel the tension, we’re well aware of where we now stand,” the manager said.

Given the political constraints noted above, it is not at all clear that the envisaged Brexit reset will come anywhere close to removing the marginal competitive disadvantage faced by such companies.

For the UK’s diplomats, summits to discuss security and geopolitics are more comfortable places than the hard trade-offs that were always presented by Brexit, but have been persistently ignored.

There is a danger that Labour’s Brexit policy echoes the Conservative one in its indecisiveness. The Tories talked big about divergence but then did little to create the regulatory environment to make things happen. It was largely performative.

Labour risks falling into a similar trap of triangulating to satisfy competing domestic political interests rather than confronting the logical limits of their own red lines, and what they mean for business and the investment proposition offered by the UK.

The bald fact remains that Starmer derides Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal while largely sticking to the same political red lines — no single market, no customs union, no free movement — that created it. 

The manifesto talks about “tearing down the barriers to trade” but the prospectus for doing that will remain limited unless Starmer raises his ambitions and prepares to make compromises on mobility and alignment for which he has done little to prepare domestic audiences.

That’s why in the EU ambassadors’ meeting in Brussels this week several member states questioned whether ‘reset’ was even really the right word to describe what was being attempted.

If they’re right, then Starmer might do better to be honest, accept that the UK is ‘never going back’ and make actual decisions about which direction the UK should exit the economic halfway house the Conservatives created.

Based on past experience of the UK Brexit debate, the risk is that Starmer finds it easier not to choose.

I am away next week so will leave you in the capable hands of my colleague Laura Hughes, our public policy correspondent, who specialises in healthcare policy and the NHS.

Britain in numbers

This week’s chart comes from a timely Resolution Foundation briefing paper on apprenticeship levy reform that cites ONS data showing that a “lack of qualified applicants” was a growing challenge for businesses looking to recruit in 2022-2024.

The paper by Sofia Corcoran and Louise Murphy makes the point that since the apprenticeship levy was introduced in 2017 — making all larger businesses pay a 0.5 per cent charge on salary bills over £3mn — it has had the perverse effect of reducing the number of young people getting on-the-job training. The result is that since its introduction the number of under-19s starting an apprenticeship has fallen, while the number of older starters has risen.

In numerical terms, that means the number of under-19s starting an intermediate apprenticeship fell by 30,000 between 2017 and 2023, while higher-level starts among over-25s increased by 45,000 over the same period. 

That is surely not what the apprenticeship levy was intended to achieve in terms of widening opportunity to young people who were not taking the university route into work.

Labour is promising to address this problem as part of its “youth guarantee”, offering all 18- to 21-year-olds access to training, an apprenticeship, or support to find work, but industry is still awaiting details of how a new “growth and skills levy” will work.

More flexibility is promised in how to spend the levy but the early indication on apprenticeships is that this will mean refocusing existing budgets on more entry-level apprenticeships.

The first sign of that came in Starmer’s conference speech, when he announced new Level 2 (GCSE equivalent) “foundation apprenticeships” to support the bottom end, while crimping funding for Level 7 (masters degree equivalent) at the top end.

But as Corcoran and Murphy argue, the government must guard against a more ‘flexible’ levy being used by industry to in effect subsidise substandard courses, or fund more general compliance training that businesses would have paid for anyway.

Given the persistent failure of industry to spend the levy contributions in full, a difficult balance will need to be struck between making the system more permissive without sacrificing the quality that the UK needs to genuinely narrow its skills gaps.

The State of Britain is edited by Gordon Smith. Premium subscribers can sign up here to have it delivered straight to their inbox every Thursday afternoon. Or you can take out a Premium subscription here. Read earlier editions of the newsletter here.

The cost-of-living-crisis is the single biggest driver of people seeking financial advice or guidance, a new report from St James’s Place (SJP) has found.

Major life events or milestones are the biggest prompts for people to seek financial advice or guidance, SJP’s Real Life Advice Report, launched today (3 October), shows.

Almost half (48%) of those who have accessed advice or guidance – 12.5m people – did so following a key moment.

This includes buying a property, getting married, or dealing with an unexpected change like divorce.

Overall, 17% of respondents said reaching a certain age was what prompted them to seek financial advice, while 15% said it was buying a property.

Just over one in 10 (12%) said it was receiving an inheritance, while 10% said it was retirement and 10% said it was getting married.

The study, which surveyed just under 12,000 individuals, also highlights that unexpected change and challenges are key drivers of financial advice or guidance.

More than one in ten (12%) sought support following a change in job status, such as promotion, career change or redundancy, 6% following divorce and 6% following caring for loved ones.

Serious illness and becoming a single parent were triggers for others (both 5%).

St James’s Place director partner engagement and consultancy, Alexandra Loydon, said: “Big life events and milestones make people stop, assess and plan, and often they prompt people to undertake some financial planning too.

“While it’s clear that one of the greatest benefits of financial advice or guidance is the support it can offer in times of change or stress, the key to navigating those moments is putting a strong financial plan in place ahead of time.

“Seeking the support to do so not only boosts mental and emotional wellbeing, but provides the confidence to reach life’s goals and milestones in the first place.”

While life events and milestones are collectively the biggest reason that people seek financial advice or guidance, SJP’s research found that the single biggest driver was the cost-of-living crisis, with 18% accessing support due to this.

Other macro trends also prompted action, with 13% seeking support due to changes in the economic environment, 10% as a result of high mortgage rates, 7% following policy changes and 5% after a change of government.

For just under a fifth (18%) of those who have taken advice or guidance, seeking help was the more positive consequence of accumulating a savings and investment pot large enough to warrant it – rising to 27% to those that are currently receiving ongoing financial advice.

Referrals and recommendations are also common prompts for taking advice or guidance, with 15% of those who have received advice or guidance doing so following a personal referral, and 8% because they had a family adviser.

The study also found that younger generations are more likely to seek support to navigate complicated issues.

SJP’s research revealed that the reasons why people first take financial advice or guidance are changing.

Those aged 55 and over were largely prompted by more simple reasons, with one in five stating it was either because they’d reached retirement (21%), their savings had reached a certain level (20%), or they’d reached a certain age (20%).

In comparison, those aged 18 to 34 are more likely to seek support to navigate more complicated issues, as managing money continues to become increasingly complex.

Nearly a quarter (24%) have taken advice or guidance because they were worried about the cost of living (compared to 8% of those aged 55 and over).

Overall, 17% sought support to get on the housing ladder (versus 10% of over-55s) and 16% did so due to concerns around high mortgage rates (versus 3% of over-55s)

A total of 12% turned to advice or guidance to tackle how they support a loved one with care costs (versus just 1% of over-55s).

Loydon added: “Younger generations face a very different landscape to their parents and grandparents, from higher living costs and a tougher housing backdrop, to the decline in defined benefit pension schemes meaning greater individual responsibility for their retirement.

“This increasingly testing and complex backdrop means it’s even more important to be thinking about and taking action to build up finances as early as possible.

“Advice and guidance can help with understanding these issues, and with putting measures in place to ensure their money works as hard for them as possible, no matter what their circumstances are.”

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Steinhoff’s former finance director has been sentenced to five years in jail, becoming the most senior executive to be convicted for their part in a €6.5bn fraud at one of Europe’s biggest furniture retailers.

Ben la Grange, who pleaded guilty on Thursday, was also handed five years suspended in addition to actual prison term. His sentence was mitigated because he had offered full co-operation with South Africa’s authorities for many years and “shown remorse”, prosecutors said

The conviction of the former chief financial officer was the second in the Steinhoff case in the past week and comes more than six months after Markus Jooste, the former chief executive who was accused of masterminding the fraud, died by suicide.

The case sparked criticism in South Africa over the time it took to bring perpetrators to justice. Steinhoff, which was listed in Frankfurt and Johannesburg, first admitted to “accounting irregularities” in December 2017, sparking a 98 per cent slide in its shares.

At its height, the company was the second largest furniture retailer in Europe after Ikea, with brands including Pepco, Bensons for Beds, Poundland and Conforama.

Forensic investigators from PwC found in 2019 that Jooste had masterminded the fraud by creating “fictitious and Irregular” transactions that “substantially” inflated profit and asset values.

The former boss shot himself in the seaside town of Hermanus in March, a day after he and former company secretary Stephan Grobler were named as lead suspects and ordered to face charges of fraud and insider trading.

In Jooste’s absence, prosecutors later added the 50-year old La Grange to the charge sheet, focusing on a handwritten invoice worth €23.5mn, which Jooste had given him in November 2016.

The former chief executive had told him it was a “rebate” due to Steinhoff from a company called the TG Group and La Grange organised for Steinhoff to process the invoice, boosting Steinhoff’s profit by the same amount. However, it was a “complete fabrication”, prosecutors said.

In his plea, La Grange said he knew that this was “not a true and genuine invoice” and had resulted in Steinhoff’s accounts being “not truthful and correct in material respects”. He had previously said he had not known the invoice was a fake, but had trusted Jooste.

While La Grange is the most senior executive to be convicted, he is not the first one linked to the fraud to be found guilty.

Two former Steinhoff Europe executives who helped Jooste create the paper trail for this fraud, Siegmar Schmidt and Dirk Schrieber, were prosecuted in Germany and given jail sentences this year.

La Grange’s conviction came a week after prosecutors secured their first South African conviction in this case. Gerhardus Burger, Steinhoff’s 79-year-old doctor and a family friend of Jooste’s, last week pleaded guilty to insider trading, and received a five-year suspended sentence.

One week before the fraud emerged in 2017, he had received a message from Jooste warning him of “bad news” and advising him to sell Steinhoff shares and delete the text message.

Christo Wiese, Steinhoff’s chair at the time of the collapse, told a local radio station last week that there will not be “full justice” in this case because the main culprit “will not be held to account in a court of law.

Jooste died without providing an explanation for why he had constructed a multi-jurisdictional fraud that not only shone the spotlight on South Africa’s corporate governance, but also on how he managed to dupe auditors Deloitte into signing off Steinhoff’s financial statements.

Deloitte eventually paid a R1.3bn (€67mn) settlement to Steinhoff’s creditors, without admitting liability.