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Professor John Robertson OBA
It seems even BBC Scotland has its limits when it comes to stories from Jackie Baillie. Nowhere in the MSM but on RADIO NEWS HUB, (?) yesterday:
Long NHS waits are over 800 times more common in Scotland than they are in England, Scottish Labour has claimed. The party said its own analysis of publicly available figures showed Scotland had nearly 15,000 ongoing waits of two years or more – representing one case per 367 people.
Meanwhile, NHS England reported having 182 waits of more than two years, or around one in 317,000 people. The figures involve those waiting more than two years on NHS outpatient, inpatient or day case waiting lists. Under this measure, Labour said the total number of waits of more than two years is 82 times higher in Scotland – or about 864 times higher once adjusted for population size.
Dame Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman, said: “Thousands of Scots have been stuck in limbo for years on end desperately waiting for the help they need, while others have emptied their savings accounts or gone into debt paying for private care.
Sometimes, I find massive differences between NHS Scotland and NHS England and I think, is that plausible? The above is not. There’s some different counting going on here, some different recording.
I do know:
The figures for England reflect elective care (consultant-led referral-to-treatment pathways), while Scotland’s data includes both inpatient/day case treatments and outpatient appointments. Direct comparisons are challenging due to differences in healthcare policies, data collection, and definitions of waiting lists between England and Scotland. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/articles/nhsplannedcarewaitingtimesacrosstheuk/2024-06-18
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/nhs-recovery-scotland-lagging-behind-englands
I don’t know and it’s not worth my time finding out, just how much the above affects the data revealed.
What I do know and it matters a great deal is this:
Folk on the two hour waiting list have chronic not life-threatening conditions. There are more important waiting lists like:
12 hour A&E waits TWICE as long in England and nearly THREE TIMES as long in Wales
Performance statistics for A&E waits, NHS England, November and December 2024:
Over 12 hour delays = 54,207 patients – from decision to admit to admission. This equates to 1,749 decision to admit delays over 12 hours per day, an increase of 23.6% (334 patients daily) from December 2023.
Question: how long had these c.54k patients already spent in an A&E department up to the time the decision to admit them was made? In other words what was the TOTAL time they spent in A&E – how much longer than 12 hours did they spend in A&E – before being admitted to a ward? These 54k patients are the so-called ’trolley waits’!
Back to the NHS England performance statistics: over 12 hour delays during December = 166,989 patients – from arrival. This equates to 12% of attendances, compared to 157,556 (10.8%) in November 2024.
And for comparison, performance statistics for A&E waits for NHS Scotland, November 2024, from Public Health Scotland (January 16, 2025):
Over 12 hour delays = 6,683 patients – from arrival. This equates to 5.4% of attendances, compared to 7,674 (5.9%) the previous month, and 4,914 (4%) monthly average for 2023.
Yes, too many long waits in NHS Scotland but credit where credit is due: 5.4% of attendances in November is a lot lower than the equivalent figure of 10.8% in England.
For completeness, from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s press statement dated December 19, 2024 on latest statistics from NHS Wales:
‘The data, released today (Thursday 19 December 2024) by the Welsh Government showed in November .. more than one in seven (14.7%) waited 12 hours or longer in Emergency Departments across in the country.’
And 5.4% is a lot lower still than 14.7%!
Are politicians in Unionist party’s in North Britain aware of these comparisons favourable to NHS Scotland? Or is it that they are confident that the North British news media will never report or challenge their persistent efforts to denigrate and gaslight?
NHS Scotland increases number treated within 18 weeks to lead NHS England by 14%
From Public Health Scotland 18 March 2025, for the quarter ending 31 December 2024, we can see that 67% of the 278 805 patients attending were treated within the 18 weeks target. This is a 1.5% improvement on the figures for the same period in 2023.1
NHS England does not published quarterly data but for December 2024, the figure was only 58.9% treated within 18 weeks.2
NHS Scotland is thus treating 13.75% more within the target of 18 weeks. Remember that small percentage figure refers to more than 38 000 seen on time in NHS Scotland who might not had they lived in England.
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
How can these people describe themselves as Scottish labour when they do nothing each and every day but talk Scotland down?
Especially this one and her boss – both devoted to badmouthing everything Scottish.
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“Scots have been stuck in limbo for years” ….as in having to listen to Dame Jackie Baillie’s incessant S**** aka lies….but apparently we have to keep putting up with it (and her) as the BBC and other media both aid and abet her, and also her party, in promoting all of her, and also all of their, S**** and lies….to Scots.
Also funny she should mention “private care” as one of her colleagues, as in the current Health Secretary for England, has insisted that more “privatisation is needed within the NHS”…..also another coincidence is that he Wes Streeting and also Keir Starmer , Yvette Cooper and then Labour Mayor Dan Jarvis too…..all took political donations from a Private Healthcare company………
Of course Jackie Baillie is pretending that she and her party supports the NHS more and so then she (and her party) are supposdley against patients seeking private healthcare…..while behind the scenes Labour UK , are openly campaigning for more privatisation within the NHS …..(so what return do these Private Healthcare companies expect for their donations to Labour politicians….as in that is surely a great question for Jackie Baillie ) ????????
Wes Streeting (NHS) Health Secretary………had said this……….
“Labour would hold the door open for Private Healthcare in the NHS”.
(As he said “We’re going to be holding the door wide open and encouraging them to come in.” In a speech in 2023 to the NHS Confederation….”them” being the private Sector)……….
One does hope that next year , Baillie’s Labour party are , in the Scottish elections, the ones who are in political “limbo”……. because what they say to Scots and what they actually do and also intend to do are usually the exact opposite………
For evidence of this then read previous posts on TUS whose topic is Labour and also read about them on other sites on social media too……that also records Labour’s (broken) promises, Labour’s (mounting) lies and also Labour’s (clear) duplicity and (abundance of) hypocrisy all done via Labour’s political glass house ……with which they, especially Baillie, throws stones from at the SNP…..but often misses her target as too many voters now see how S**** Labour really are as a party………
Liz S
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I am sure that the hard working Scottish NHS staff really appreciate Damn Jaikie Baillie constantly running down their efforts at every opportunity , with stats that could have come from the mouth of Trump , in order to gain a little bit of self publicity .
What a wretch she is !
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++++++++breaking news+++++++++
Old folks homes in crisis as Labour goon squads arrest all the residents as being septuagenarian/octogenarian “terrorists”.
++++++++++breaking news+++++++++
gavinochiltree
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Is it any wonder faith in UK politics has collapsed when blatant lying is dismissed as “it’s just politics”…
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They are taking a leaf out of Trump’s handbook….where they just lie about what they say is going well….and then dismiss all of the things that are not going well as being fake news….however the media still platforms them and refuses to challenge them.
That is what Farage will do if he ever does achieve any real power in the UK…..as it seems to be a winning formula with those voters, both here and also in Trump’s America, who are too easily swayed into being convinced that fantasy represents reality…..
They also are encouraged to recall supposed past ‘great times’ which they are then conned into thinking that they, as supposed past ‘great times’ will then exist again in the future, but only if they , as voters, vote for them (the con men/women) as a party to govern their country…that’s the fantasy but the reality is that they are very much just ‘Turkeys voting for Xmas’……
Meanwhile those who con them will reap the benefits , as will their pseudo political donors, in them all gaining more wealth for themselves at the expense of those who voted for these Con Artists as a party and then as a government….also our children and grandchildren, will in the future, suffer the consequences of the Con artist fake politicians adopting a fossil fuel environment in the UK instead of a net zero strategy………and their pseudo political donors who invest in Fossil Fuels will then also reap another financial reward from the sustaining of Fossil Fuels by UK governments determined to still use them as a energy source…..
Alas one cannot argue with “stupid, ignorant and also, as voters, those who are cut from the same cloth” as those that they vote for in elections……so we , who oppose them , must also suffer under their governance and bad , corrupt and destructive policies….
Also we in Scotland are also contending with a UK (politically comprised) media who are no better than those political parties that they, as a UK media, prefer to both support and also platform (and protect too)….as in all of the UK parties….including now the pretend one Reform UK.
**** the UK and it’s politics and media……whose only purpose, via it’s politics and media, is to only serve and only report upon matters that they want to sustain and so protect and then do the opposite for those other matters that they want to abandon and so neglect/ignore/demonise as those things that they seek to destroy……
It seems that in 2029 polling is showing these same “stupid, ignorant and also, as voters, those who are cut from the same cloth” are now intent on voting for a government that is best described as a Kakistocracy government aka Reform UK.
Better Together………I do not ******* think so……either back then in 2014 or now….or indeed ever in our, Scotland’s, future.
Liz S
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jacket on shaky nail as we in Scotland SAY
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