Taking the bull by the horns! « The Witch Doctor

Posted by: Witch Doctor | February 11, 2008

Taking the bull by the horns!

THE BULL - THE FIRST STEP

So, My Black Cat, you think the GP’s need to divert attention away from evening/weekend opening and go into the closet for a while.

What do they do in the closet?

DIFFICULT BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE!

They summon the whole of the medical profession to join them. Not just GP’s.

Then they begin to take the bull by the horns.

Head on.

How can they do that?

They will need to do it via the BMA. There is no other way. After all, the members of the BMA are the BMA.

You know, My Black Cat, one year ago, The Witch Doctor did not personally know ANY member of the medical profession who knew much about:

1. The Leitch Report
2. Skills for Health and The Skills Escalator
3. The height and breadth of National Practitioner Programme
4. The forces behind Agenda for Change
5. NHS Beacons and the link with the USA
6. The multi-national companies in the wings.
7. The smaller companies, believing they were providing a good service, but were instead creaming off taxpayers money that should have gone directly to healthcare instead of dubious, unproven exercises.

Most of The Witch Doctor’s medical colleagues did not know much about MTAS and MMC either. And there was little realisation regarding the impending unemployment of junior doctors or what they were going through.

Sometimes there was a smattering of knowledge, but very disconnected. For example, there was no consideration of where a competence and protocol driven health care system might lead in the long term.

And few had read any of the government publications relating to any of this. Few doctors read government publications, anyway, unless they relate to their own specialty, because they are too damned busy. The government knows this and could easily take advantage if so inclined.

If The Witch Doctor had expounded on these things all at once, there would have been a kind of tolerant silence. A silence that said it all. That Witch Doctor is a silly old bat, suffering from more than a touch of paranoia!

Not so, My Black Cat. Not so.

So we had to drip, drip, drip the information on a blog, to bring this to the attention of seven members of the medical profession so these doctors could work things out for themselves and share their thoughts with others. Other medical bloggers are doing the same in their own ways.

THE MESSAGE BEARERS

Yes. Seven is the witching number.

Seven is enough. The right seven people can think their own thoughts, draw their conclusions, and so information gradually disseminates nationwide.

We just want seven people to read our blog.

Don’t we My Black Cat?

That’s all.

Now, where was the BMA in all of this? Did nobody there know what was going on?

If great chunks of the NHS are slowly being dismantled; if taxpayers’ money is being siphoned off into exercises only remotely related to medical care, is it not a matter of national importance?

Shouldn’t doctors have a say?

Why was the BMA not engaging them on these matters of national importance?

Could their leaders and negotators themselves not believe what they were witnessing?

Or did they approve?

The BMA now has the chance to step out into the light.

They need to take it.

They need to factually inform ALL their members, and non-members too if they can, about all the activites mentioned above, so that doctors can make up their own minds where the NHS is going and whether or not they should stop it. This needs to be done as a matter of urgency. The efforts should not be about GP surgeries opening evenings and weekends. This is just the government’s diversion - yet another effective way of demeaning the medical profession. Instead, ALL doctors need to know now about the clever structures that are now in place which will dismantle much of the NHS and will lead doctors into an unpromised land.

Closely followed by their patients.

And, once doctors have this information, they need to form a judgment on this important issue. There needs to be a vote on the direction the NHS is to take. If the medical profession decide they don’t like it, they will have to stop it.

And stop it they can.

Because, at the end of the day, the government knows that health-care of any kind is not possible without the medical profession.

That is why this government is dividing and ruling at every opportunity - doctors versus doctors, health care workers versus doctors, patients versus doctors.

The government have even by-passed the BMA by writing directly to GP’s over opening hours. They may justify this action by saying all doctors are not members of the BMA. True. However, it offers yet another opportunity to divide and rule.

They have to keep the voters sweet at the same time suggesting the GP’s are not coming up with the goods.

Sweeten them with a citizen’s jury party! (although that misfired a bit and has gone silent now.)

The government does not want a united medical profession.

The government is confident because they know the medical profession seldom unites.

If it does unite, it will rattle the government. Look at the ability of the junior doctors, with the help of only a handful of seniors, to rattle them over MTAS.

This is not a stupid government. Minds need to be open to the fact that they are demonstrating carefully orchestrated competence and steely determination.

The medical profession must not allow their negotiators to mess this up.

a red apple ……………………

The Witch Doctor - Link to a random page

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LINK TO MISSING PERSONS WEBSITE

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Responses

Brown was never comfortable with the health reforms and IMO would have not gone along with them had he taken office earlier. That his predecessor stayed in office to ensure reforms went beyond ‘no return’ is still fixable because there is no such thing as a point of no return.

What maybe stopping Brown doing a U turn now is money because it will be huge, so, he may think that if he spent all this money just to U turn, he may lose the next election because people will not understand why the money that money is being spent without the public seeing any added value. What I hope Brown’s advisers will tell him, is that the public are much more aware, tired and do not approve of what is happening. Much more than he thinks, that a U turn will most likely ‘guarantee’ him a landslide win in the next election.

By: Sam on February 11, 2008
at 8:24 pm