Man, 31, is jailed after NYD incident

A 31-year-old man who held his mother and grandfather h o s t a g e o n N e w Ye a r ’s Day has been jai l ed f or 27 months.

Duncan Sinclair abducted the pair and held them against their will a t h i s g r a n d a d’s h o me i n Lammermoor, Calderwood, threatening them with knives.

Hamilt o n She r i f f Cour t pre v i ousl y heard t hat t he grandad, 87, passed away before the case was called – but that no link between the incident and his death could be established.

Sinclair, the court heard, went to the property at 3pm on Januar y 1 with his mother.

H o w e v e r, h e b e c a m e increasingly violent towards his relatives when his grandad took bottles of whisky from him and made off with a number of stolen items several hours later.

Police later traced an intoxicated Sinclair and found him in possession of some of the stolen items.

He pled guilty to abduction, robbery and assault and causing fear and alar m by shouting, swearing and making threats at Pembroke on the same date.

S h e r i f f T h o ma s Mi l l a r backdated Sinclair’s sentence to January 3. University Hospital Hairmyres’A&E department recorded improved waiting times but still trails other acute sites in Lanarkshire, according to the latest set of statistics.

The number of patients being treated, admitted or discharged at within four hours for the week ending Sunday, May 20 was 90.2 per cent.

The Scottish Government target is 95 per cent.

Within NHS Lanarkshire as a whole for the same week, 94.1 per cent of patients were seen within four hours and the NHS Scotland figure was 92.9 per cent.

At University Hospital Monklands in Airdrie, 96.5 per cent of patients were seen within four hours while the figure for University Hospital Wishaw was 95.1 per cent.

Ten patients waited more than eight hours while four waited over 12 hours at Hairmyres.

This compares to zero for both eight and 12 hours at Monklands and one and zero respectively at Wishaw.

The latest figures for patients being seen within the four-hour target time improved at Hairmyres compared to the previous week ending Sunday, May 13.

A total of 83.5 per cent of patients were seen within the period while 26 waited over eight hours and five more than 12 hours.

The average of patients seen in four hours for the same week within NHS Lanarkshire was 91 per cent while the NHS Scotland figure was 90.7 per cent.

The number of abortions across L a n a r k s h i r e wa s a t a s even- year high i n 2017.

New government figures reveal that there were 1465 t e r mi nat i o n s i n t h e NHS health board area.

The statistics were published by Inf or mation Services Division Scotland, a part of NHS Scotland which provides health service data used in planning.

And the report on the figures says: “There continues t o be a s t rong association bet ween depr i v at i on a nd termination rates.

“While r at e s a c ro s s t he deprivation categories have generally been decreasing or remained relatively stable, since 2013 a widening gap has been evident between women from the most and least deprived areas.

“In 2017, the rate of t e r mi n a t i o n s f o r wo me n in the most deprived areas remained around as twice as high as those from the least deprived areas.”

The statistics show that 15 females aged under 16 had terminations in Lanarkshire.

Among those aged 16 to 19 there were 218 terminations; 414 in those aged 20 to 24; 314 terminations among those aged 25 t o 29; 267 among those aged 30 to 34; 183 among those aged 35 to 39; and 54 among women aged over 40.

There were 654 terminations i n South Lanark s hi re – down f ro m 673 in 2016.

And in neighbouring North Lanarkshire there were 811 terminations, up from 751 in 2016.

Across Scotland, the number of terminations was at a five-year high in 2017.

There were 12,212 terminations of pregnancy during t he year – t his was 106 more terminations than reported in 2016; an increase of just under one per cent.

Nationally, for the fourth successive year the lowest termination rate was in the under-16 age group, down from 4.0 to 1.3 per 1000 females aged 13 to 15.

The Republic of I rel and voted in favour of legalising a bor t i on by a t wo- t o- one margin during a referendum last month – there are now calls for the law to be changed in Northern Ireland to bring it in line with the rest of the United Kingdom, and Ireland.