I’ve always thought that Camley’s cartoons were a bit crap but this one stinks of political bias.
The idea that Scotland’s waiting times figures are being ‘massaged’ comes from the opposition parties. Here are the facts again:
From Public Health Scotland today, for September 2022:
69% of attendances at A&E services were seen and resulted in a subsequent admission, transfer or discharge within 4 hours.
For the same month in England, the figure was 56.9%.
NHS Scotland has thus performed 21.3% better.
Remember, it’s not just 21.3%. That means thousands more seen within 4 hours in Scotland than if they’d been treated in England and hundreds of thousands more waiting more than 4 hours in England than if they’d been treated in Scotland.
In Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, a staggering only 31.8% were seen in 4 hours. The areas has 3 Labour and 1 Con MP (IDS).
Scotland’s worst performing board, Lanarkshire, saw 56.7% in 4 hours.
| The number of people waiting two years for a scheduled hospital appointment has significantly reduced, helping ease pressure on the NHS ahead of the winter. This follows intensive work from Health Boards to clear backlogs caused by the pandemic. The national target to clear two year inpatient waits in most specialities by the end of September was set in summer to address the impact of the pandemic on long waiting times for planned care. New figures show that by the end of September, 60% (18 out of 30) of all inpatient specialities had fewer than 10 patients waiting over two years for treatment. The Scottish Government continues to work closely with Health Boards to clear remaining waits as soon as possible, with a specific focus on specialities and areas where there are larger amounts of people waiting. This includes maximising and re-allocating NHS Golden Jubilee University National Hospital’s capacity, a new mobile operating theatre at Stracathro to support long waiting patients in Grampian and the development of a new Urology Hub in Fife. New National Treatment Centres opening in NHS Fife, Forth Valley and Highland next year will also create significant additional capacity to treat patients in orthopaedics. Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said: “It is through the dedication and resilience of NHS staff that we have been able to clear a significant amount of two year inpatient waits. “This is a positive step forward in our recovery from the pandemic and will help ease pressure on the NHS over winter. “But challenges remain and there are still unacceptable waits in Orthopaedics, General Surgery and Urology – I am determined to provide the support necessary to drive improvements in these specialities.” Background Public Health Scotland report |
Talking-up Scotland 
Utter desperation now from the Herald on all fronts.
The recent Social Attitudes survey highlighted just how much the average Scot regards pays to all the continuous “were doomed” nonsense from the Herald and it’s like.
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IF the Health stats WERE being massaged you can be sure that the Unionist opposition would be all over it like a Ferries Fiasco story !
Scoop Baillie and her wee sidekick Sandy Gulhane would be wetting themselves in front of the cameras as they put on their ” only doing this for the public interest” faces and posing for photos with their Head of PR , Kaye Adams .
The BBC Disclosures team would be investigating in their incomparably neutral and competent fashion and discovering that massaging has been openly taking place in hospital Physio units all over Scotland – and Nicola Sturgeon KNEW !!
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Over the past few weeks I have detected another Unionist tactic regarding NHS Scotland. No longer just pointing to ‘problems’, no longer content with personalised attacks on the Cabinet Secretary for Health, but now also working to DISCREDIT basic performance statistics.
Perhaps this is in response to sites like TuS cutting through and raising public awareness by relentlessly providing statistical evidence of how well NHS Scotland compares with the NHS services elsewhere in the UK!
The Scotsman today has this example from Scottish Labour’s Jackie Baillie. She is quoted saying (with my emphasis): “From MASSAGING A&E FIGURES to misrepresenting waiting times, there is nothing that this SNP government will not stoop to in order to hide their failures.” There’s that word massaging again!
The article is not even about A&E figures by hey why should that stop Labour undermining trust in NHS Scotland without justifying this claim. Of course Mr Matchett of The Scotsman just reproduced the quote in his article without telling us what lies behind the ‘massaging A&E figures’ accusation.
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Unfortunately this is what modern journalism has become, the lie is halfway around the world before the truth has it’s boots on.
My first thought on Camley’s cartoon was what the hell has Angela Merkel to do with it, without the hint of Yousaf in uncharacteristic rotund form I doubt the hint it was about SG would have dropped without focussing on the title of the piece.
As Stewart exampled above, the collusion between opposition and the media has been obvious for some time now, but it’s getting pretty desperate that they’re throwing such accusations as this around without a shred of evidence.
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Angela Merkel, lol yes I can why you were perplexed. It’s a terrible drawing, I couldn’t work out who he was trying to represent.
Back to school to learn some basic drawing skills might be a good idea.
The Herod is a BritNat rag, doing a huge disservice to actual real journalism.
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