of breaking the NHS.
Professor John Robertson OBA author of 20 peer-reviewed papers on media effects
The above is not, as they would claim, ‘balance.‘ That would be hard, published, statistics to counter Swinney’s earlier claim that more appointments are being met than last year.
Here it is:
Official figures from Public Health Scotland show that new outpatient attendances (a key measure of completed appointments) in the first half of the 2025/26 financial year (April to September 2025) totaled 653,805, an increase of 25,027 compared to the equivalent period in 2024/25.
This aligns with broader Scottish Government reporting of over 31,000 additional appointments and procedures delivered from April to September 2025 versus the same months in 2024, supported by £110 million in targeted funding to reduce backlogs.
While the most recent monthly data (up to 30 September 2025) predates early November, the year-on-year trend indicates higher activity levels, with September 2025 alone seeing 116,776 new outpatient attendances—an increase of 9.5% (10,136) from August 2025.
Footnote - Yes AI assisted but if you know what you're doing, have a bit of previous knowledge, experience and are politically 'savvy', it's just a new powerful tool to make you more efficient. Mind you, schoolkids need a lot of guidance.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
This highlights a point I’d intended to make earlier on Stewart’s comment which was later published as ” If NHS Scotland was performing worse than NHS England, the British Labour Party in Scotland’s condemnation of the SNP in government might be justified but it’s not so it’s not “, it’s about establishing the ‘agreed lie’ and keeping the lie alive with repeated prompts, which all and sundry repeat by rote whether they believe it or not, what used to be known as psychological warfare.
eg – I don’t think a solitary soul in Scotland believed any of the guff from BBC Scotland’s extended propaganda campaign over QEUH, but a decade later when the trigger “troubled hospital” is mentioned, they know exactly what is being referred to – eg2 What does ‘unelected bureaucrat’ make you instantly think of ?
Slightly off topic, but as you are aware I only get the sanitised ‘furrner’ version of the BBC on the web, no comments visible, no regional reporting visible, and god knows what else is modified or blacked out to ‘furrners’ – If you have a link to a BBC article in your or anybody else’s article or comment and I open it, there is the briefest glimpse of the original before the link refreshes to the ‘furrner’ version.
Yet the most amusing aspect of all is that the popup “Register for a free BBC account” only happens when I click ‘Scotland’ – It tells you a lot of what the psy-war specialists and contractors worry about with regard to truth leaking out….
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