HELLO and welcome to the PM Business Briefing, as breweries have called for support amid tightening restrictions on hospitality and socialising to help tackle the Omicron variant.
Scotland's traditional Hogmanay celebrations are to be cancelled and live sports will be "effectively spectator-free" for three weeks from Boxing Day as part of new Covid-19 restrictions, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.
The First Minister also introduced new curbs on hospitality and urged people to "stay at home as much as possible" until at least the first week of January.
The Society of Independent Brewers' chief executive James Calder said: "Scottish pubs have gone out of their way to make themselves Covid secure throughout this pandemic and are often lower risk venues than the inevitable house parties that people will flock to as new restrictions are introduced.
“Small brewers are reliant on community pubs for the vast majority of their sales and the slowly ratcheting up of Covid restrictions is having a devastating impact on their businesses during the critical Christmas period."
He also said: "The re-introduction of table service and the use of online apps particularly impacts small brewers as they are rarely mentioned on menus or apps and people are indirectly discouraged from trying local craft beers.
“We hope that the Scottish Government will make funding available for small brewers during this difficult time with another round of the vital Brewers Support Fund as soon as practically possible.”
The Scottish Chambers of Commerce said the measures will be "another hammer blow for employers and Scotland's economy".
Liz Cameron, chief executive of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, said: "Businesses across Scotland, who have been doing everything they can to keep their employees and customers safe, will be bitterly disappointed by these further restrictions."
Scots firm signs digital dentistry agreement
Glasgow-based Novosound has capped off a string of recent contract wins with a seven-figure agreement that will put its remote sensors into medical use for the first time.
The initial research and development component of the contract with dSound, a venture capital-backed company based in Israel, will be worth “in excess” of £1 million.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here