By Rab Bruce’s Spider

Do you remember all the howls of protest from Scottish Labour and their media buddies about the alleged crisis in the Scottish NHS because A&E waiting times were too high? That resulted in the Scottish Government agreeing to publish weekly figures on A&E performance in relation to the target of 95% of patients being seen and dealt with within four hours.

And do you remember how Scottish Labour and their media buddies persisted in wailing about the inadequacy of the NHS under the SNP’s governance because the 95% target wasn’t being hit week after week? This was despite the actual performance figures being well in excess of anything Scottish Labour achieved while they were in power.

You must remember how, just a week ago, Shona Robison, the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing & Sport, was widely condemned for claiming that nearly all Health Boards in Scotland had achieved above or around the target when, in fact, some had missed it by fractions of a percentage point. The media went to town on this, creating a storm in a teacup.

But guess what? One week later the media are absolutely silent on the weekly statistics. I’ll caveat that by saying I refuse to watch Reporting Scotland and I don’t follow BBC News on Twitter so maybe they did mention the latest figures but STV certainly didn’t, and neither have any other media outlets at the time of writing this blog.

This made me suspicious, so I posted a comment on Twitter, suggesting that there must have been an improvement in the performance and, lo and behold, I was very quickly informed that the target had been achieved, with an overall performance of 95.2%.

Now, whatever you might think of a target-driven NHS, you would be entitled to think that the first ever week in which the target, which is an extremely challenging one even if it has been reduced from the virtually impossible to achieve 98% that the Scottish Government originally set, would be newsworthy from a media which has obsessed over the failures to hit the 95% figure over the past months.

OK, one week might be a blip and maintaining this level will not be easy but the past week was a milestone of sorts and, if nothing else, the NHS staff who worked so hard to treat all those patients deserve some recognition. That recognition has been denied them by the media and I’m sure I don’t need to spell out my suspicions as to why.

I have no objections to the Scottish Government being challenged when there are real issues. Let’s face it, there are several areas where they can come in for some valid criticism but the NHS A&E waiting times really isn’t one of them and, given the fuss made when the target for A&E treatment has been missed, an unbiased media should at least mention the success. The fact that this has gone unremarked is merely another confirmation that the Scottish media are only really interested in a story if it falls into the #SNPBad category. Is it any wonder many of us choose to seek out alternative sources of news?