9am Briefing: Fans clamour for Madonna tickets

MADONNA fans are already clamouring for tickets as experts predict her first ever concert on Scottish soil will generate millions of pounds extra for the city economy.

It was finally confirmed yesterday that the Material Girl will play a summer concert in Murrayfield Stadium, one week after the News revealed moves were being made to bring her 2012 world tour of album MDNA to the Capital.

And commerce chiefs believe those efforts will prove lucrative for city coffers with fans from across the country expected to make the pilgrimage to see the Edinburgh leg of the Madonna tour, which only has two UK dates.

Promoters Live Nation Entertainment said tickets for the concert would go on sale at 10am on Friday.

• THE Royal Bank of Scotland has spend £38 billion clearing up the mess left by Fred Goodwin - so far.

Chief executive Stephen Hester revealed the figure - bigger than Britain’s entire defence budget - in a message to staff, posted on the internal website of the Edinburgh-based bank, it was reported today.

He did not mention Mr Goodwin by name, refering to him simply as “my predecessor”. But he said “the costs of clean-up from our risky inheritance” included writing off bad loans, making staff redundant and selling off bad businesses.

Mr Hester also broke his silence on his decision to bow to public pressure and give up the £1million bonus he had been awarded for his role at the 82 per cent state-owned bank.

He said the row over the payment, on top of his £1.2 million a year salary, had been “discomforting to say the least”. He added: “Our position in the spotlight makes the job harder.”

• EDINBURGH City Council fired more staff than any other Scottish local authority over the past five years, new figures reveal.

A total of 398 council employees in the Capital were sacked, almost three per cent of the workforce, it was reported today.

A survey found more than 2000 council staff across Scotland were dismissed for a wide variety of reasons including drunkenness, violence and bullying.

In East Lothian, council chiefs sacked two employees for fighting and one for persistent smoking.

• ARGENTINA is to make a formal complaint to the United Nations Security Council after accusing Britain of “militarising” their long dispute over the Falkland Islands.

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said the UK’s decision to send one of its most modern navy warships to the South Atlantic and to post the Duke of Cambridge on military duty in the region posed a risk to “international security”.

Her announcement comes amid simmering tensions between London and Buenos Aires in the run-up to the 30th anniversary of the 1982 Falklands war, which saw Argentinian forces invade the archipelago in a row over its sovereignty.