According to the Herald and headlined today:
The number of planned operations being carried out in Scotland remains more than a quarter below pre-pandemic levels and is down compared to a year ago, amid delays to new elective hubs.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/20596338.nhs-recovery-fewer-operations-2022-year-ago/
Really? See this from Public Health Scotland, 4 days ago:
Planned operations do remain down on pre-pandemic levels but are not down on one year ago. Notably operations cancelled due to lack of resources (dark grey line) are back at the pre-pandemic, an impressively low 2 to 3%.
Talking-up Scotland 
The Herald doing what The Herald does best – being a very poor fan sheet for unionist naysayers !
Who reads The Herald these days ? What is its target audience ?
Do it’s lead writers , Baillie and Gullane even read it ?
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I used to buy The Herald almost daily. Sadly, it’s a joke now. A bad one at that.
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The odd thing is I know two people that buy the Herald and have done for decades. Yet both are independence supporters but still buy it. I have suggested the Bella or the Beano for accurate reporting. People are odd at times.
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Desperate stuff from a dying Herald.
Now if it “admitted” that its circulation was down 25%, and a restructuring of its Scottish Office briefing operation was underway, then at least it’s staring to become a newspaper again.
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I noted this story being featured on the BBC/Scotland web-page early doors, “Scotland’s papers: The ‘thinner’ blue line and fall in operations”.
The former is a Jamie Greene concoction, avoiding any embarrassing comparative to police numbers in England, but still managing create “Crisis”…
The preposterous Helen McArdle piece doesn’t cite Tsunami Baillie or Disaster Gulhane as the source of this NHS guff, only the BMA’s Dr Lewis Morrisson plays the Union game of “exhausted….etc”.
What bugs me most about the glib comparative with pre-Covid levels is it presumes Covid has vanished when it quite clearly has not, and makes the NHSS recovery all the more remarkable..
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Just heard a report on ITV News statistics for drug related deaths in England and Wales.
On the BBC website I found an article on the figures for Wales.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62393799
“There has been a sharp increase in the rate of deaths from drug misuse in Wales, according to new figures.
There were 210 deaths recorded in 2021, compared with 149 in 2020 – an increase of 41% – Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showed.
The figure was also the highest since records began in 1993, with the previous record being 208 in 2018.”
At the time of posting this, there was no mention yet from the BBC about the figure for England.
ITV News has reported
http://www.itv.com/news/2022-08-03/drug-deaths-in-england-and-wales-highest-since-records-began
” Drug-related deaths in England and Wales have reached a record high, driven primarily by opiates, new Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show.
There were 4,859 deaths related to drug poisoning registered in 2021, up 6.2% from 2020.
This is the ninth consecutive annual rise, and the highest number since records began in 1993.”
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I still subscribe to the herald online, it’s a unionist cesspit. It’s a bit better now the comments are not a free for all so about 30 sock puppets disappeared overnight. It still has half a dozen utterly horrendous unionists and about a dozen normal folk commenting. The editorial is old school unionist. The current crop of commentators are lightweights in comparison to their old colleagues but I suspect the poor buggers are paid next to nothing.
Reporting is always tainted towards negative sensationalist side but they hated Boris as much as Sturgeon. The linesman was also never popular.
Nowt queer as folk as someone already said.
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