Mission partially accomplished.

New Labour's mission to break the back of the medical profession is working. They must be delighted with each and every step towards their final destination - supreme executive power allied with wealth and influence in the private sector that will come to them all when electoral nemesis strikes in 2010.

When Jobbing Doctor started in Medicine, he wanted to do it for absurdly idealistic reasons - to be able to help people get better. You worked incredibly hard, and passed hundreds of examinations, and worked your socks off as a junior doctor so that you could eventually reach your ambition. Money helped, but was not that important.

We are now in a situation where the elected Government are using unemployment of doctors to achieve their aim. To privatise the NHS. And it's working.

There are now a cohort of doctors who say they will be willing to work for the private sector, and this report highlights this. This is not because they want to work for UHE, Boots or Virgin. It is because they need a job. So if there is an excess of supply over demand, then posts will be filled. Mortgages are not paid with moonshine.

As young doctors, we were proud to work in the finest and fairest system of healthcare in the world. Really until around 1990, this was still the case.

The rot set in with Thatcher, and has continued relentlessly since.

The Government needs to realise that doctors rushing to work in these organisations is not because we think they are good, or honest or philanthropic. No. 

It feels a little to me like George Orwell's dystopic view of the future in his amazing book, 1984.

'If you want a vision of the future, imagine that it is a boot stamping down on a human face. Forever."

The boot belongs to big business, and is worn by New Labour.