The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser primarily, finishing in 8 days, 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
Professor John Robertson OBA
On February 17th 2025, BBC Health and BBC 1 reported:
The government has met a key election pledge to deliver two million extra NHS appointments in England in its first year, the prime minister has said. The target was achieved between July and November last year, when there were almost 2.2 million more elective care appointments compared to the same period in 2023, the government said.
While they did mention briefly:
That period was affected by doctor strikes, however, which would have suppressed the number of available appointments.
they did not mention the 23 days of strikes in the period being compared (July to November 2023). Given that disruption, the increase claimed actually looks more like a decrease.
Today, utterly neglected in the Scottish media, including BBC Scotland:
The pledge to carry out 64,000 surgeries and procedures with additional funding by the end of March 2025 has been exceeded, new figures released to Parliament reveal. More than 75,500 NHS surgeries and procedures were delivered between April 2024 the end of January 2025, around 11,500 more than pledged.
Funded through £30 million investment, the targeted activity has resulted in significant reductions in inpatient/daycase waiting lists across a number of health board areas and specialities. Between April 2024 and September 2024 there has been:
- a 44% decrease in Imaging waits at NHS Fife
- a 22% decrease in Urology waits at NHS Forth Valley.
- a 19% decrease in Ear, Nose and Throat waits at NHS Highland
- an almost 15% decrease in Ophthalmology waits at NHS Lanarkshire
- an almost 10% decrease in General Surgery waits at NHS Lothian.
The targeted funding has also helped reduce the total national waiting list size between April 2024 and September 2024 for imaging by 7.5% and for scopes by 7.3%. https://www.gov.scot/news/pledge-on-waiting-times-exceeded/
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' 
The BBC doing what the BBC always do. Spreading lies by way of omission, misinformation and disinformation.
we can only hope that more Scots become aware of this before it’s too late.
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Aye, a “key election pledge” attained within 4 months of settling into the office was exactly the sort of nonsense expected of Wes Streeting, a number juggling exercise to push him up the greasy self-promotion pole of UK politics.
Continuous improvement has long been a feature of Scotland’s NHS, in truth more down to the dedication of personnel than any politician, whose job is mainly to make sure funding is in place to enable it, and push policy to ensure more nurses and doctors are trained.
I will take many years before the damage done to England’s NHS shows sign of improvement, one of the most glaring, training of qualified specialists – Perhaps in a decade….
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