Posted by: Tony Copperfield
20 January 2016What’s that, Jeremy? A new ‘package’ for GPs? How lovely! Whatever could it be? A big pack of Hobnobs? A box full of Labrador puppies? A suitcase stuffed with used fivers?
No, wait. It’s a package of ‘measures’. What, rulers, calipers and a set of scales? No. ‘Measures to address growing pressure on GPs.’ How absolutely marvellous! Why, we haven’t had a package of measures to address growing pressures on GPs promised for, hmmm, let me think now, at least a week.
He’ll appear to pull GPs out of a hat, even though they went in as pharmacists, paramedics and physician assistants
The fact is, we’ve been told for a very long time, and with monotonous regularity, that the asphyxiating atmosphere on Planet Primary Care is about to get a blast of resuscitating oxygen. Our reaction to each portentous pronouncement has gone from genuine anticipation, through perplexed bemusement to, finally, utter despair. Because, with each promise of help and hope, Jeremy Hunt is increasingly looking like a clapped-out magician with a transparent, predictable and frankly irritating stage act.
So doubtless, once again, he’ll bamboozle us by recycling old money and stale promises into something he’ll pretend is shiny and new. He’ll mesmerise us with the old three-card trick of shifting existing DES and QOF funding into 7/7, 8 to 8 working. And he’ll appear to pull GPs out of a hat, even though they went in as pharmacists, paramedics and physician assistants.
The Amazing Jezza may be able to use his smoke and mirrors to misdirect the public. But it no longer works on us: we simply don’t believe in magic any more.
So, Jeremy, we’d be awfully grateful if, for an encore, you could make yourself disappear. Or is that the trick you have in store for us?
Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex. You can follow him on Twitter @DocCopperfield
Readers' comments (11)
Anonymous | Sessional/Locum GP20 Jan 2016 2:59pm
Sadly, there's no point in wishing Hunt would go away. I heard Ken Clarke spouting a load of tosh on the radio recently; but there's one thing he was right about. We always tend to personalise these issues, making out that it's the SoS who's got it in for us, when the SoS is just doing what the cabinet tells them to do.
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3rdGen | GP Partner20 Jan 2016 6:04pm
For sure, any new funding is going to be tied into the new 'eight days a week NHS'
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DAVID Hogg | Salaried GP21 Jan 2016 10:02am
We have over many years lost control of our professional autonomy
"The fault dear Brutus lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings "
Shakespeare Julius Caesar
The only way is resign you fools
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Anonymous | GP Partner21 Jan 2016 12:32pm
We're told there is no money . Of course there is -lots of it. It's just that we can't have any of it because Jezza The Astonishing has made it invisible .
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Anonymous | Other healthcare professional21 Jan 2016 10:08pm
He is a master at the disappearing act as magically dissapears every time that he is wanted for interview or a doctor strike or any other occasion he is needed.
He also practices the invisibility spell so he will never be interviewed with a doctor so he would be exposed as a fraud!
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Anonymous | NHS Manager21 Jan 2016 10:14pm
I believe that this is just a mechanism to try to avoid falling out simultaneously with yet another arm of the healthcare professions. imagine if h out with consultants junior doctors AND GPs all at the same time?
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Anonymous | Sessional/Locum GP21 Jan 2016 10:32pm
We're working at a time when the model of publicly funded health care that's been present since the founding of the NHS is being dismantled. What on earth were going to have at the end of it who knows ... the guys in charge are busy spreading the NHS ever thinner and thinner till a point will come when it no longer really exists ..except in name. That's the magic trick that's being played ..if it isn't Hunt it'd some other idiot..doing their bit in a vacuous political system full of vacuous political people. I hate them
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Paul Cundy | GP Partner22 Jan 2016 12:40pm
Wait 'til your read his letter to Dr Wollaston!
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Anonymous | Sessional/Locum GP22 Jan 2016 10:05pm
What fantastic insight and wit as ever. Love it!
Ditch the contract comrades!
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Anonymous | GP Partner23 Jan 2016 11:58am
They do need 4 submarines as opposed to looking after the sick or educating the young.
Why are we moaning and complaining ?
We are independent Contractors, I believe.
GPC, please ask the masses, the general unwashed like myself [ too many hours] if we wish to continue doing Jezza's penance,imposed Contracts.
You may be surprised that perhaps we have all had enough.
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