John Swinney has admitted that the NHS is in crisis. That will be little surprise to thousands of Scots patiently waiting for operations.
Over 800,000 of us are on waiting lists and it is a struggle to see a GP. Seeing patients languishing in hospital corridors is another scandal.
The First Minister’s response is to propose 150,000 extra appointments or procedures in the coming year. And an NHS app to bring the service into the digital age.
There’s also additional funding for more GPs. But Record readers have been here before. We have heard about plans to save the NHS from every health secretary since the SNP came to power.
After the SNP’s first Holyrood election win in 2007, then health secretary Nicola Sturgeon vowed “unnecessary waiting for treatment” would “become a thing of the past”. Her successor in health, Shona Robison, said the integration of health and social care would change things.
Another health minister Alex Neil said A&E reforms were “the most significant ever”. As first minister, Sturgeon pledged that our NHS would be better than it was before the pandemic.
But here we are in 2025 and our NHS is still struggling. Scotland needs delivery, not warm words. We deserve a health service where we can be treated quickly and to a high standard. No one should be waiting in hallways and it should not take so long to get treatment.
It is time for John Swinney and this SNP Government to turn words into deeds.
Halt extremists
The world stood still yesterday as we remembered the Holocaust. Survivors led commemorations to mark 80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
The King was among those paying tribute to the fortitude of those who made it out alive – and vowing never to forget the horrors inflicted on European Jews.
He was right to insist “the responsibility of remembrance rests on our shoulders”. For, if we ever ignore the evil inflicted by the Nazis, it will be possible for such atrocities to happen again.
You don’t have to look far for right-wing tub-thumpers who seek to turn legitimate grievances into hateful division. Singling out particular groups as scapegoats for society’s ills is another Nazi tactic again being routinely rolled out by ambitious political extremists.
It is everyone’s duty to remember the Holocaust. And we must also battle constantly against the ideas that made it happen.
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