KY Jelly and GPs

GPs are facing a vote this month. We learned about our options at Rantingshire Local Medical Committee where our chairman valiantly led us through the options available to us. It’s a really appealing choice:-

Would you like to be shafted gently, (with KY Jelly) (Option A)?

Would you like to be shafted, (without any KY Jelly) (Option B)?

Now be a good boy and bend over and take what’s coming to you!

The PCT Chief Executive bravely attended and promised to rub it all a bit better once it was all over. How nice of him. But he’s still the DH’s Gauleiter in Rantingshire, and still paid to implement DH policy. And his job security is less than that of a premier league football manager…so how long will he be around for us to work out if we can trust him or not?

That’s about the level of Gordon Brown’s negotiation with GPs at present. Even Devil’s Kitchen is showing us some sympathy we have been so badly treated. The issue is not the hours row, it's the government's BAD FAITH in negotiation.

Now the apparent causus belli is the government’s wish for GPs to extend their surgery opening hours. Now there’s no real objection to this, and it’s fair enough for the government to want us to provide longer opening hours. And if the negotiation was just about GP opening hours there would be no major row, and an agreement would have been reached already. (As NHS employers and GPC were about to reach back in November).

OK extending opening hours will cause us some discomfort, and need some reorganisation, but the idea of evening or weekend surgeries is not objectionable in itself.

Medically it’s unnecessary, and it will take time away from the sicker patients, and make life easier for basically fit patients such as commuters. But this government will pander to whims and wants, rather than medical needs and this is such voter rather than patient centered behaviour.

There’s also safety issues around female staff working alone late at night in poorly protected health centres.

But actually GPs think this dispute, which has been provoked personally by Gordon Brown (and to Postman Alan’s horror. The new SOS for Health is a pragmatic ex-union man, and if left to himself would have sorted out a deal already), is about far more than a few more hours of surgery opening. It tells us a lot about the Scottish control freak, and his bad faith, and sheer lack of ability, in negotiation.

The government is acting to destroy the clinically based (about important chronic diseases) and evidence rooted Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) and use the money on cheap, politically motivated, targets about access for anything and everything. In other words, sod the quality, just see the patients. Quantity is what the Clunking Fist wants, not quality. We’d agree with him and say we’ve had too much of him, and the quality’s been crap. The changes are being imposed unilaterally, by executive fiat, rather than in negotiation. In other words the government has given up on the GMS2 contract, and will do whatever it bloody well feels like, provided it “consults” for 13 weeks beforehand. The GMS2 contract now feels worth as much as Neville Chamberlain's 1938 “piece of paper.” Now this is no way to get a happy, contented and effective workforce, and Dr Rant feels very free to damn this government at any turn face to face to patients. The government loses no opportunity to rubbish my work and I’ll return the favour. It’s also no way to get what you want out of people. Sullen acquiescence perhaps, but no more.



Perhaps this is what the government wants, to destroy British General Practice. It cannot stand GPs becasue we are independent and think for themselves. We are the one bit of the NHS that Nye Bevan never got around to nationalising, and the service we provide is all the better for that.

Gordon Brown thinks he can get primary care for patients more simply and cheaply than by using GPs. Hence an endless stream of ideas such as “skill mix” and “practice nurses could do a lot of the GPs work.” Speak to any practice nurse and she’ll admit she cannot.

And Gordon Brown wishes to get rid of GPs surgeries and load us into either Lubyanka or the Polyclinic. He wants his mates at Virgin, and from those ever so ethical USA HMOs to come and replace existing surgeries.


The issue for patients is going to be “are you happy with a cheaper, dumbed down, cut price service?” Or would you prefer to be able to see a real doctor, who you know and recognise, when you need one?”

If you want a real GP service in the future you may have to pay privately for it.
If you want Medicine for Idiots (to go alongside Perfect Financial Idiocy) then keep voting Labour into office. If you want to see the destruction of British General Practice vote Labour. If you want to keep on paying taxes to get nothing, vote Labour.

But if we want functional general practice delivered by real doctors, and appropriate support staff, then the public need to support their GPs vocally, and oppose this destruction.

Oh, and vote against Labour whenever you have the chance.