Monday, March 30, 2026 — Edition No. 44 — The Cornmill Intelligencer

← Past Editions · Edition No. 44 · Monday, March 30, 2026

Today’s outlook: Sunny spells with therapy ponies and a strong chance of ospreys

Dogs & Animals

Joy on Four Hooves: The Therapy Ponies Bringing Comfort and Smiles to Care Home Residents

Miniature ponies Haggis and Pip are visiting care homes across the west of Scotland — and the results are wonderful

When miniature Shetland ponies Haggis and Pip clip-clopped through the doors of Almond View care home in Drumchapel, resident Anne, 87, had one thing to say.

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Health

A Simple Blood Test Could Catch Alzheimer's Years Before Symptoms — And Scotland Is Watching Closely

A £100 blood test measuring a single protein could transform dementia diagnosis from guesswork to science. Scotland's NHS is evaluating how to bring it into routine care.

Imagine catching Alzheimer's disease not when memory has already begun to fade, but years — possibly decades — before the first symptom appears. That future is closer than most people realise, and Scotland is paying attention.

A new generation of blood tests can now detect the biological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease with remarkable accuracy, measuring tiny traces of a protein called p-tau217 that reflects the buildup of rogue amyloid and tau proteins in the brain. Those proteins can accumulate for up to 20 years before a person notices anything wrong.

The test costs around £100. It requires nothing more than a standard blood draw. And in clinical studies involving nearly 1,800 patients across Europe, it has detected Alzheimer's pathology with accuracy rates between 85 and 96 per cent — a dramatic improvement on the current system, where diagnosis often relies on pen-and-paper cognitive tests that misidentify the disease in up to a third of cases.

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What's On Glasgow

Jazz Piano Meets Cello, Meets Full Orchestra: Glasgow Gets a Night of Music That Defies Every Category

Mercury-shortlisted Fergus McCreadie and Apollo Theater winner Ayanna Witter-Johnson join the BBC SSO at SWG3's Galvanizers on 22 April — and it promises to be extraordinary

On Wednesday 22 April, something genuinely unusual is happening in Glasgow. A Mercury Prize-shortlisted Scottish jazz pianist, a London cellist who won Amateur Night at the Apollo, and one of the country's finest symphony orchestras are all converging on an industrial warehouse in Finnieston. If that sounds like it shouldn't work, that's exactly why you should go.

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's latest event at SWG3's Galvanizers brings together Fergus McCreadie and Ayanna Witter-Johnson with players from the BBC SSO for a concert celebrating Scottish jazz legends past and present — while creating something entirely new.

Fergus McCreadie might be the most exciting musician to come out of Scotland in years. Born in Easter Ross and raised in Dollar, Clackmannanshire, McCreadie's first instrument was actually the bagpipes — by his own admission, he wasn't very good. Then, aged 12, he saw a jazz piano performance and everything changed. "It looked so fun, so free and so creative," he has said.

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What's On Glasgow

An Evening With Gregor Fisher: Scotland's Comedy Legend Takes the Stage at the Pavilion

Rab C. Nesbitt, The Baldy Man, and a lifetime of Scottish screen gold — Gregor Fisher brings it all to Renfield Street this April

There are certain faces that belong to Glasgow the way the Clyde belongs to the city — woven so deeply into its identity that you cannot imagine one without the other. Gregor Fisher's is one of them.

The man who gave us Rab C. Nesbitt, The Baldy Man, and some of the finest comic performances in Scottish television history is heading to the Pavilion Theatre on Renfield Street for two nights this April — and if you have any feeling for Scottish culture at all, you should be there.

An Evening With Gregor Fisher runs on Wednesday 22nd and Thursday 23rd April at 7.30pm. It is, remarkably, the first leg of his first proper UK tour — a format that promises stories, anecdotes, and a few surprises from a career spanning nearly five decades.

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Health

Twice a Year, Not Every Day: The HIV Prevention Jab That Could Change Everything for the People Who Need It Most

A twice-yearly injection approved in December could transform HIV prevention for those failed by daily pills — and Scotland is already leading the way

For some people, a pill a day is not a simple ask.

If you are sleeping rough, fleeing domestic violence, or sharing a house where a blister pack of tablets invites questions you are not ready to answer, daily medication is not a matter of discipline — it is a matter of circumstance. And for years, that gap between a drug that works brilliantly and a life that makes taking it nearly impossible has left some of the most vulnerable people without protection against HIV.

That may be about to change. In December 2025, the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved lenacapavir — sold under the brand name Yeytuo — for the prevention of sexually transmitted HIV-1 infection. It is given as an injection once every six months, with a short course of tablets for the first dose only. After that, two visits a year to a clinic is all it takes.

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Science

Galaxies That Shouldn't Exist: How the James Webb Telescope Is Quietly Rewriting the Story of the Universe

The most distant confirmed galaxy — just 280 million years after the Big Bang — is challenging everything we thought we knew about cosmic dawn

The universe, it turns out, was in rather more of a hurry than anyone expected.

In January 2026, astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope confirmed the most distant galaxy ever observed — a bright, surprisingly mature system called MoM-z14, existing just 280 million years after the Big Bang. Its light has been travelling through expanding space for 13.5 of the universe's estimated 13.8 billion years to reach us.

That alone would be remarkable. But MoM-z14 is not an outlier. It is the latest in a growing catalogue of galaxies that, according to our best cosmological models, simply should not exist — at least not so early, not so large, and not so luminous.

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Science

Scotland's Secret Underwater Gardens: The Seagrass Meadows Being Brought Back to Life — and Why They Matter More Than Rainforests

A £2.4 million programme is restoring Scotland's lost seagrass meadows — extraordinary underwater ecosystems that capture carbon 35 times faster than tropical rainforest

Somewhere beneath the cold, grey waters of a Scottish sea loch, a quiet revolution is underway. No cameras. No fanfare. Just divers in wetsuits, carefully pressing tiny green shoots into the seabed — and, in doing so, restoring one of the most extraordinary ecosystems on Earth.

Scotland's seagrass meadows are coming back to life. And the story of why that matters may be the most important conservation tale you've never heard.

Here is a number worth sitting with: seagrass captures carbon up to 35 times faster than tropical rainforest. Not a misprint. Thirty-five times. While the world's attention has been fixed on the Amazon, these humble underwater prairies — swaying gently in shallow coastal waters — have been quietly outperforming the planet's most celebrated forests.

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News UK

Out With Churchill, In With Otters: Britain Votes to Put Wildlife on Its Banknotes

More than 44,000 people had their say — and nature won by a landslide. Now a panel of experts, including a Scottish wildlife filmmaker, will decide which creatures grace our fivers and fifties.

Somewhere in Britain, a red squirrel is polishing its CV. A barn owl is practising its best side. And a beaver — yes, a beaver — may be about to become the most famous face in your wallet.

The Bank of England has confirmed that native British wildlife will replace historical figures on the next series of banknotes, after a public consultation drew more than 44,000 responses. Nature was the runaway winner, chosen by 60 per cent of respondents as their preferred theme — comfortably ahead of architecture and landmarks (56 per cent) and notable historical figures (38 per cent).

Out, eventually, go Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, JMW Turner and Alan Turing. In come creatures yet to be determined — but the lobbying has already begun.

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Community

Growing Their Own: How Glasgow's Community Gardens Are Putting Fresh Food and Real Hope on the Table

From a gardening club in Toryglen to a city-wide movement — volunteers are transforming derelict land into productive food gardens across Glasgow

Twenty-two years ago, three residents in Toryglen decided they had had enough of watching their neighbourhood deteriorate. So they started a gardening club.

Today, that modest act of defiance has grown into Urban Roots — a community-led environmental charity that runs food growing spaces, conservation projects, and healthy eating programmes across the entire Southside of Glasgow. It is one of the most successful community food growing organisations in Scotland, and it began with nothing more than a few spades and a stubborn refusal to accept that derelict land had to stay derelict.

Urban Roots is not alone. Across Glasgow — in Govan, Maryhill, Calton, and the East End — volunteers are transforming forgotten corners of the city into productive food gardens. And right now, as spring brings the growing season back to life, the movement is entering what may be its most important chapter yet.

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Dogs & Animals

Scotland Holds Its Breath: The First Osprey of Spring Has Returned — and You Can Watch It Live

NC0 is back at Loch of the Lowes after thousands of miles from West Africa — and the webcam is rolling

At precisely 6pm on Wednesday 18 March, a familiar silhouette appeared above Loch of the Lowes Wildlife Reserve near Dunkeld. After a journey of thousands of miles from West Africa, the female osprey known as NC0 had come home — and with her return, spring in Scotland officially began.

Within moments, NC0 was doing what ospreys do: preening, rearranging twigs on her long-established nest, and surveying her territory with a proprietorial glance over the loch. Thousands of viewers watching the Scottish Wildlife Trust's live webcam erupted in celebration. The first osprey of the season had landed.

Every spring, Scotland's ospreys make one of nature's most extraordinary commutes. From wintering grounds in West Africa — Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau — they fly north across the Sahara, over the Mediterranean, through France and England, to reach the Scottish lochs and rivers where they breed. It is a journey of roughly 5,000 miles, undertaken on wings spanning five feet, fuelled by fish snatched from waterways along the route.

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