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| Shocking scandal of the doctors’
plight |
HOW would you like to compete for a job with more than a thousand
other applicants?
Astonishingly enough, the applicants were all qualified doctors
– everyone desperately trying to land a hospital post.
And that, mind, is happening at a time when all the spin doctors
say there are not enough doctors in Britain.
The fact is – as I have written before in this column –
that there are more than enough doctors in Britain to attend to
all our ills.
What there is not enough of are hospital posts – and they are
determined by bureaucrats whose financial strings are basically
pulled by Whitehall mandarins.
The scandal involving the army of unemployed doctors hit the headlines
this week when a desperate British Medical Association – the
doctors’ union – went public and revealed that 3,000 newly
qualified doctors are out of work. A jobless doctor in trouble is
Tom Dolphin who wants to specialise as an anaesthetist.
He applied recently for a post at a Newham hospital – and had
to compete with 1,100 other aspiring anaesthetist.
To keep ends together he has been working recently as a locum in
the Accident and Emergency department of the Royal London Hospital
which is a sister hospital to Barts, and one linked to the Royal
Free.
He hopes to land another short term contract at the same hospital
which will last until early next year. But after that? He doesn’t
know – and he’s worried.
If you have been waiting months for an appointment at a hospital,
you may wonder what has caused this extraordinary situation.
It appears to have arisen out of a mix-up between the General Medical
Council (GMC), which runs the profession, and the government. Between
them, they have cocked up it, making sure, ludicrously enough, the
supply of doctors exceeds the demand from hospitals.
They underestimated the increase in the number of medical school
graduates and allowed more overseas doctors to come to Britain than
there are jobs for them.
In 2000 the number of doctors from India, South Africa and Australia
steadied at around 1,000. Last year it peaked at 7,500! Afraid,
presumably, of a shortage of doctors the GMC allowed overseas doctors
four years ago to take their initial entry exams in their own countries
in order to speed up the flow of medics into the UK.
Qualified overseas doctors have to pass two entry tests- PLAB 1
(this stands for Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board) and
PLAB 2 – before being certified to practise over here. Now,
in India special schools are teaching doctors to pass PLAB 1 to
take advantage of this loophole.
The result is that there are thousands of overseas doctors in the
UK, who have passed the two PLAB exams, and still cannot get a job.
Unable to claim benefits,they are living on a pittance in squalid
conditions, many of them in London, hoping to join a GP pracice
or a hospital. And, usually, hoping in vain.
As usual, our brilliant Blairites are laid back about the crisis.
When a doctor raised her plight with her MP, former Labour health
secretary, Alan Milburn, she was told the government would “rather
have too many doctors than too few”.
Tell that to the unemployed doctors – or elderly patients waiting
months, even a year, for a hip replacement or a knee operation so
that they can lead a normal, painless life.
How a militant Hain was tamed
 I
WONDER if Highgate author Denis Herbstein has more to reveal about
the youthful militant activities of anti-apartheid campaigner in
the 1960s and 1970s Peter Hain – now MP and Northern Ireland
Secretary.
Mr Herbstein (pictured) has been invited by the Friends of the Highgate
Library to give a talk at Highgate Library in Chester Road next
Thursday on his book White Lies (HSRC £14) a story of the
late Canon Collins’s secret war against apartheid.
In the book, Herbstein described how the young exiled South African
Hain led a militant campaign to stop the all white South African
rugby tour of Britain with “scenes of disorder not seen since
the Mosleyite marches of the 1930s”. Now, of course, like a
lot of other Blairites who began their political life as Marxists,
such as home secretary Charles Clarke, Hain’s rebellious nature
has been very much tamed.
Mills returns from Sin City
 I
CAUGHT up with the ebullient tycoon John Mills yesterday (Wednesday)
in Las Vegas.
Mills (pictured), who, apart from running the Town Hall’s finances,
has also masterminded one of Britain’s leading mail-order firms
JML, based in Kentish Town. But he wasn’t in the gambling capital
to lay bets. He was there purely for business purposes – attending
a conference of mail-order companies.
Mills will fly back today (Thursday) in time to attend the Labour
party’s conference in Brighton on Monday where he will be the
star speaker at an anti-Euro rally.
Mills heads a think-tank, along with Austin Mitchell MP, which campaigns
for Britain to leave the EU. Other speakers will be Tony Benn and
Kelvin Hopkins MP. But a former employee of Mills – Andy Love,
a van driver – who became an MP for Edmonton in 1997 won’t
be supporting his old boss.
“I’m afraid Andy is a bit of a Blairite these days,”
Mills told me.
Is the cult of celebrity David’s
brand new idea?
From left: David Yelland, Nicola Solomon, Philip Dodd, Michael
Johnson and Barry McIlherney |
PIERS Morgan, who, as the editor of the Mirror, contributed as
much as anyone to our vacuous celebrity culture, appears to have
started a trend when he railed against the very Z-listers he helped
create on TV last week.
On Tuesday night at the British Library, David Yelland, the former
editor of The Sun- turned-PR guru to clients including Tesco and
Coca-Cola and Barry McIlherney, the publishing executive who has
the dubious distinction of having invented Heat magazine, joined
three other celebrity branding experts in a panel discussion.
Yelland said it “didn’t matter at all” if a celebrity
brand was ripped off; news surely, to his clients who pay tens of
thousands for celebrity endorsements. McIlherney, for his part,
described Big Brother ‘star’ Jade Goody as “the antichrist”.
Jade Goody has appeared more than half a dozen times on the cover
of Heat.
Helping the aged?
I HAVE a piece of advice for Dr Alan Tomkins, who, in effect,
runs Hampstead Town Hall: Take a look at an early day motion in
Parliament proposed by several MPs, including Glenda Jackson.
It implores the government to allow more money to be spent on helping
older people to stay healthy and active by studying art, music and
literature.
Certainly, the University of the Third Age (U3A), which has a roll
of 1,500 elderly students at its courses at Hampstead Town Hall,
could do with a bit more money. Why? Because the board that runs
the Hampstead Town Hall wants to double their rent from £32,000
a year to £64,000.
The U3A charity de-pends on annual membership fees of £54
from its retired members many of whom are disabled.
Dr Errol Wall, the U3A’s secretary told me it would be “disastrous”
if the rent hike went ahead.
“We are obviously alarmed,” he said.
Dr Tomkins maintains that an upward rent review after five years
had been specified in U3A’s lease. In a conciliatory tone,
he added: “We have been very laid back in trying to get this
resolved.”
Camden Council gifted this lovely Victorian building in the mid-1990s,
on a long rent-free lease, to a group of people to run for community
purposes. They raised more than £8 million from the Arts Council,
Heritage Lottery and local contributions to refurbish it. The U3A
certainly qualifies as a community body.
Pity, they appear to be being treated with the dead hand of pure
commercialism by the managing board.
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