The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser primarily to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland - a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson
By Professor John Robertson OBA
The Scotsman, the Morning Star and STV all have misleading reports of cardiac deaths and waiting lists today along the lines of:
Waits for heart appointments in Scotland soar to a record high
and suggest that reductions in cardiac deaths are somehow being reversed.
The deaths first:
Cardiac deaths [thin purple line above] have been climbing for many years now and had been reducing marginally from 2020 before climbing again, also marginally since 2022. The reason is simple – more people living long enough to become ill in this way and the statisticians’ predictions [thin broken line] have just been catching up.
As for the waiting list in Scotland, yes it has been growing, for the same reason, to 24 000 according to these news outlets.
All things being equal, with 10 times the population, England might be expected to have 240 000 but it doesn’t, it has nearly 420 000, pushing twice as many!
Support Scots Independent, Scotland’s oldest pro-independence newspaper and host of the OBA (Oliver Brown Award) at: https://scotsindependent.scot/FWShop/shop/
The Oliver Brown Award for advancing the cause of Scotland’s self respect, previously awarded to Dr Philippa Whitford, Alex Salmond and Sean Connery: https://scotsindependent.scot/?page_id=116
About Oliver Brown, the first Scottish National Party candidate to save his deposit in a Parliamentary election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Brow
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Morning Star :-). Don’t often see the fine socialist paper mentioned but well done although it seems to have fallen into the usual unionist groupthink.
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