Sunday, 8 November 2015

Dear Mail Group.......

Dear Mail Group

I am writing for several reasons, all under the same general umbrella of admiration for your mighty journalistic tradition which invariably serves the public interest above all else.  It is most excellent that you are now taking such an interest in the junior doctor contract story, particularly the way in which you are now focusing on the characters involved, it is most educational and intellectually invigorating.    Obviously the fact that doctors are in uproar about the lack of robust safeguards to protect their patients from doctors working dangerous excessive hours is not really important.  Also the fact that antisocial hours are going to be less rewarded during a global recruitment and retention crisis is also immaterial, the inevitable workforce crisis that will result will not matter.  It is far more noteworthy to Mail readers that some junior doctors are also young photographic entrepreneurs and have healthy interests outside of medicine, does this make them capable of membership of David Cameron’s ‘party of the workers’?  Or is membership of this neat little club contingent on only particular types of work such as running a hedge fund or banking?

The fact that we already have excellent 7 day services in many areas with the current doctor contracts is also irrelevant, we should simply trust Jeremy Hunt when he says contract reform is necessary for improving the quality of care, he is a man with an impeccable record, a man without conflicts of interest, a virtuous beacon of noble text messaging just at the right Murdoch moment.  This honourable Health Secretary would never attend non minuted meetings during taxpayer funded working time with newspaper editors such as Geordie Grieg of the Mail on Sunday in June 2014 and  then refuse to release any details of what was discussed, would he?  That pesky Freedom of Information does need scrapping while we’re on that topic, allowing the public to understand the real motives lurking behind the big decisions would not really help propagate the benevolent interests of the Daily Mail owners would it?   Meanwhile it is quite right that the Mail ignores the ‘Hunt effect’ which demonstrates that the Health Secretary’s scaremongering may be costing patients their lives; it is also quite irrelevant that Hunt has been instrumental in burying the most important lesson from the Midstaffs disaster, that being the vital  safe staffing work by NICE.

 Anyway I digress, I am just so grateful to you for your powerful investigative journalism, it really is a battle against all the odds, David against Goliath: months of painstaking fieldwork lurking on ‘secret’ forums populated by thousands of people which effectively makes them open, covertly watching and waiting, and then striking out, in brazen tones, and motivated above all else by what you think is right, right for you, for your Editor, for your owner, and right for the short term needs of your newspaper.  While we’re on that topic, it’s worth remembering the benevolent history of the Mail itself, Lord Rothmere was a friend to so many, not matter their race, religion or creed, Hitler and Mussolini were certainly not left out of his fold, what a terrible shame that the rest of the British press did not give fascism the support it so deserved.  It is also notable that the working class ownership of the Mail continues with the controlling shareholder of the Mail Group the 4th Viscount Rothmere is worth around a billion pounds and is a keen supporter of David Cameron.  It is also notable that the noble Viscount, when not fighting for the poor, has non-domicile tax status and pays very little tax on his income, investments or wealth. 

Back to the topic in hand, the Mail really is spot on with its excellently researched article so appropriately entitled “Junior medics’ attempt to plunge the NHS into crisis”.  It really is about time that these lazy workshy junior doctors took their fair share of the blame for the crisis that the NHS finds itself in today.  If only these arrogant spoilt medics, who dare own homes and spend weekends doing things other than working, had implemented the Conservative party’s magnificent Health and Social Care Act better, then we would be not be in the mess we’re in today.  Surely funding shouldn’t matter and the real terms reduction in funding that frontline services have experienced should really be no excuse, these lazy wasters should be working for free and donating their personal possessions to the cause to make up for the government’s rank incompetence.  By fighting against Jeremy Hunt’s magnificently progressive new contract, which promises to make everything better because he says it will, they are the ones to blame for any resulting crisis.  They should just accept this great new deal, after all who needs safeguards from dangerous excessive hours, who needs to retain and recruit staff when there are numerous huge gaping chasms in rotas already, who needs to value staff and reward them fairly for working more antisocial hours? 

The fact that the workable details of the contract have yet to be revealed despite Hunt threatening to impose it in well under a year is a trivial minor snag, these whingeing junior medics should get on with it, sell their kidneys and just damn well do what is in the greater good of the Conservative party.  7 day working according to Hunt will be magnificent, staff recruitment in Australasia is going well, social care is in crisis, spreading everything thinner over 7 days will have obvious gains, the inevitable staffing crisis will be used as a convenient excuse to centralise emergency services, shut lots of smaller hospitals that only the public want, and then it will be child’s play to sell off a lot of profitable elective services to the private sector vultures who are already lurking in the shadows.  This is democracy; this is progress, for the small minority of super wealthy people like our esteemed Viscount it is.

Finally one last thank you, I am so very grateful for your finely engineered prose who so succinctly details the real problems with the junior doctor contract situation.  If only the country was governed by the Daily Mail, what a place it would be, we could get rid of these workshy lazy maggot-like junior medics, we could dump them on Australasia as the convicts of old, and if we are to believe the honourable Mr Hunt, they could simply be replaced with various health ‘Apps’, after all technology is the way forward, long live the Viscount and the party of the 'workers'!

With love


A junior doctor

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