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| UPDATED
EVERY FRIDAY
Last Update:
Friday 20th
May, 2005 |
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| All
content © New Journal Enterprises, 2005. |
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| One
Week with John Gulliver |
| No room for racists in our health service |
ENMITY, rivalry and racial
bigotry are alive and well among doctors – according
to a medical notice board on the internet.
Most of the messages deal with career problems.
But recently there’s been a running series of messages
about ‘overseas doctors’, a coded way of referring,
mainly, to Asians.
Referring to Indian opthalmologists, one message said they
should “contribute to their country by working there
– and not legging it to the UK to make loads of money”.
In reply, an Asian doctor retorts: “Your system needs
an input of 5,000 doctors from overseas per year just to get
your NHS running, Mr Smartass, you need the overseas doctors
and not vice-versa.”
An angry consultant retorted: “I am completely stunned
by the phenomenal amount of racism in the messages. As a consultant
I feel ashamed and embarrassed that such imperialistic outdated
comments can still be made in this day and age towards people
from the Indian sub-continent. Opthalmology is a progressive
speciality and has no place for people with such disgusting
and outdated views.”
The background to this lies in the hidden scandal of the NHS
that since the 1960s thousands of Indian doctors, qualified
to work as consultants over here, have never been allowed
to practice at the top of the profession. Instead, they have
been given a lower title – associate specialist. Naturally,
their working hours were longer and pay much lower. A form
of colonialism in reverse.
A rebellion by overseas doctors, who prop up the NHS, is now
negotiating with the government to reform the system, according
to the British Medical Association. Not before time.
 Lord
Camden?
HE would not be the most popular choice of someone to Lord
over us, but former Number 10 adviser Andrew Adonis (pictured)
recently appointed as the new education minister in the Lords,
has taken the title Baron Adonis of Camden Town in the London
Borough of Camden.
I believe he was born a stone’s throw from Camden Town
Tube station and has moved back into the area – but
a call to the new Lord’s office at Whitehall drew no
response as to why he had chosen such a moniker. A House of
Lords spokesman said he could not speculate because he has
not yet been officially sworn into his new post.
But he is not the first peer with Camden in his title. The
area takes its name from the 18th-century Marquess of Camden.
He was originally John Jeffreys Pratt – a name that
lives on in Pratt Street and Jeffreys Street – and was
an unpopular Tory peer as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland where
he opposed Catholic emancipation. His actions lead to the
Irish rebellion of 1798.
 Shooting
stars help hard sell
MOVIE stars Sharon Stone and Charlotte Rampling brought a
touch of glamour to Highgate this week.
The pair were filming Basic Instinct II in Pond Square. But
there may be an added bonus for Ivor Burt, whose historic
home is being used as a set. Quite apart from the location
fee, Ivor hopes the attention created by the film will help
him sell Moreton House, his home of 41 years, where poet Samuel
Taylor Coleridge once lived.
He said: “We were asking £3.5 million but it’s
come down to £2.85 million now. Everyone tells me we
have a very nice house but it’s proving a little difficult
to sell. Perhaps the filming will help, although Sharon Stone
already has a very nice house in Los Angeles and Charlotte
Rampling is quite happy in France.
“Still, it’s been great fun having them here and
everyone has been very nice.”
If sexy scenes were steaming up the windows at the 200-year-old
home, Ivor wasn’t telling.
 Rebirth
of a great artist, forgotten for so long
HIS subjects were usually the poor and the lowly. All stunning
works in the style of Rembrandt. But the great Jewish German
artist, Erich Wolsfeld, soon discovered after he fled to London
from the Nazis just before World War II began that few were
interested in his art.
Kitchen sink and abstract art were in – Wolsfeld’s
were out.
But Irving Grose has rescued the stunning works of this remarkable
artist, who died in 1956 at 71, for display at his Belgravia
Gallery in England’s Lane, Belsize Park.
Wolsfeld, who lived in Golders Green, often travelled to the
Middle East in the late 1940s and 1950s where he lived among
the Arabs whom he painted.
The exhibition ends on May 29.
Pictured right: A self-portrait by Wolsfeld wearing Arab headgear.
Danny brings his golden touch
IN the management culture of the NHS, nothing succeeds, it
seems, like business experience.
Now, the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead hopes to benefit
from a millionaire businessman’s touch.
Danny Bernstein, the 63-year-old former managing director
of Monarch Airlines, has taken on a part time non-executive
director’s role at £5,673 a year. It is in addition
to the £20,000 a year he earns as a non-executive director
of National Air Traffic Services Limited, which was controversially
privatised by the government in 2001 and has had a rocky ride
since.
He also has a role on the board of the Watermark Group and
is chairman of the British Air Transport Association.
Mr Bernstein last hit the headlines before the election, when,
as a member of the Labour Party, he joined other leading businessmen
in signing a letter backing the party’s handling of
the economy. Pam Chesters who chairs the Royal Free board
– she used to be a Tory councillor at the Town Hall
– described Bernstein as someone with “a wealth
of experience”.
He was a major donor to Tony Blair’s election campaign.
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