Arrogance of New Labour

The more they are out of power, the more I despise them.

New Labour became a carbuncle on the body politic, and I have no difficulty in trying to forget the whole unloved, unlovely, duplicitous bunch of incompetents.

One of the problems is that they have been succeeded by an equally slippery and self-serving group of egoists.

This has been brought on by my assessment of one of New Labour's flagship projects - you know the kind that seeks to reform a system they think isn't working (it was) and replace it will an alternative that is less useful, doesn't do what it purports to do and costs millions more than what it has replaced. Allied to the fact that the project relies on rubbish IT and is badged as something it isn't, then you have the whole new Labour project in microcosm.

More expensive and of virtually no use. Rather like Tony Blair, in fact.

I was discussing (last night with some fellow GPs) the virtues of the system designed to enable patients to book an appointment with the consultant of their choice. It is completely useless. Useless. The people who designed and implemented it are clueless. Clueless.

In the past I wrote a letter. Put it in an envelope. Addressed it to a person. They opened it and read it, and decided what to do. That worked.

Choose and Book (as it is laughably called) does not. It should be renamed Not choose and Keep rebooking.

It cost millions and doesn't work.

So New Labour!

No substitute......

I teach second year students from the local University. It has been a privilege and a pleasure, and I have loved doing it. I have done it for many years.

They come to me in groups of 4, and this is the first time in their course that they have real contact with patients. I am teaching them a number of skills, such as how to present a case history to an irascible consultant, and how to examine the cranial nerves amongst many many other things.

There are 12 cranial nerves, and a number of mnemonics on how to remember the order.


"On Old Olympus Towering Tops....." starts one old (classical) mnemonic.


Another bawdy one starts "Oh! Oh! Oh! To Try And...." Modesty forbids my completing a rather juvenile one.


The one I use is "Oh! Oh! Oh! Try To Ask For A Good Veal And Ham pie"


I. Olfactory II. Optic III. Oculomotor
IV. Trochlear V. Trigeminal VI. Abducent
VII. Facial VIII. Auditory IX. Glosso-pharyngeal
X. Vagus XI. Accessory XII. Hypoglossal


There is another mnemonic for whether the nerve is Sensory (Afferent), Motor (Efferent) or Both. This goes...


"Some Say Marry Money But My Brother Says Big Boobs Matter More."

It keeps the Jobbing Doctor on his toes, and helps my clinical examination skills. The Second Year student equivalent of the uphill start is taking the Blood Pressure. I teach them using a mercury sphygmomanometer (not the new electronic ones that I don't like), and a stethoscope. Korotkoff sounds and all that jazz.

They are now at the stage where they ought to think about buying their first stethoscope. The important thing is to go for quality, because that really matters. I would go for a Littmann stethoscope every time (I have 3).

So any doting parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts who want to buy their medical student progeny a present, get a Littmann.

There is no substitute for quality.

Here we go round the Mulberry bush

Here we go round the Mulberry Bush

There is an old English nursery song:

"Here we go round the Mulberry bush,
The Mulberry bush,
The Mulberry bush.
Here we go round the Mulberry bush
On a cold and frosty morning."

I can remember singing it in the playground as a child.

It signified, for us, moving around in circles, and then we all had to fall down. That was the version at St Francis' School in Handsworth, anyway.

I was reminded of this old rhyme when I went to a meeting last night on commissioning. We are lucky in our patch to have a number of GPs who are willing and able to run with the Government's current agenda. They were there at the meeting, and were spelling out the agenda and timetable for us as commissioning groups.

My mind was transformed to the meetings that we had in relation to previous Government inspired changes - the development of Fundholding in the 1990s, the formation of Primary Care Groups around 7 years later. This was the last time that this group of people came together.

I think it was fair to say that the agenda was underwhelming. I wish my colleagues all success, and will seek to develop the changes for the good of my patients. There is much to do and much to change. The reassuring fact is that, for the Jobbing Doctor, retirement will take place before the changes come into effect.

Then I will turn into a patient. I live in my locality, and thus what happens locally will be important to me.

So here I am, today with a cold a frosty morning outside my window, thinking of a nursery song. I am fearful that it is a metaphor for our troubled times. We go round and round in circles for a while and then we fall down.

Then the privateers will come in to pick on the bones of the old NHS.