Polly has decided today that her target will be GPs. Apparently, they're all money-grabbing scumbag heroes of frontline NHS service provision who deserve to be spat on. Honestly, that's essentially what she says.
"What is a GP worth? There is no answer in this gold-rush decade when the government shies away from even thinking about worth. The public sector is nailed to 1.5% pay increases boardrooms soar by 30% and the Pay Commission is rowing about whether to defy the Confederation of British Industry and raise the minimum wage a measly 25p ..... No wonder this year's GP negotiations have run into the mud, suspended in anger."
In other words, Polly thinks GPs are not worth what they get and she's "angry about it goddamit!". It's not however strictly accurate for Polly to say that the public sector is nailed to a 1.5% pay increase. According to the paper she works for it is actually anything up to 2%. Of course the big issue with that figure is that it's outstripped by the increasing inflation rate. Polly doesn't mention that though, after all, she's one of the chosen few in Gordon Brown's Smith Institute.
She's also repeating the generalised lie about so-called "executive cat fights". The problem is that the pay and benefits specialists, Croner, produced research at the beginning of this month that shows whilst there are undoubtedly some stupidly high earning execs, they are actually in a siginificant minority. But then facts don't make a good class war battle do they? As to the CBI and the minimum wage, there is no such row going on at all. The minimum wage was raised by 25p in October, I imagine what you are referring to is the CBI urging caution about further rates of rises in 2007 after that happened. Row there was not. The GP negotiations haven't been suspended as far as I can tell either, the only people talking about things in such terms is Polly according to Google.
"GPs are visible frontline public heroes. They need four As at A-level and five years' hard training They are greatly respected: patients are attached to them with the loyalty of limpets. They top every poll for trust, so would presumably top public approval for generous rewards compared with, say, lawyers, let alone journalists About 90% of NHS work happens in the community, via their clinics. As effective NHS gatekeepers they are the envy of many less efficient EU health services Politicians love to "reform" hospitals with cunning market devices, but what matters most is the tricky business of micro-managing what GPs do."
See I told you she thinks they're heroes. You'll note though that whilst she acknowledges how popular they are with the public she concedes how unpopular she is with the public. Sadly Polly has not told us how much she earns, now you may think this is irrelevant, but as we read on it seems money, in relation to one's job is important. I am a little confused though about this idea of "micro-managing what GPs do", after all, GPs deal with disease which is complex and, like the world, quite random. How can you micro-manage the work of someone who deals only with random complexity? Polly goes on though to bemoan that,
"Bevan's great failure was to leave GPs as small businesses, so the NHS never controlled its key service."
Actually though, if you think about it, this was Bevan's great success. If he'd forced the issue all the doctors would've refused to play ball and we'd have had no NHS paid-for GPs at all. Polly now goes after her heroes in a big way though,
"Here is what [Alan Milburn's] new GP contract did, intending to encourage more preventative work: GP earnings rose 63% in three years. They gave up out-of-hours work, home visits are rare, and they work 44 hours a week - low for top professionals. Clinics stay resolutely shut on evenings and at weekends..... They earn more than the lord chancellor and circuit judges, which may be fine with the public. But while their pay soared, they took more NHS money into their own pockets and spent a lower proportion on their practices . They used to keep 40% for themselves, but in the past year that has crept up to 45%. As they're private businesses, no mechanism fixes how much they keep and what they invest in their clinics Patients are supposed to be the "market" that tests their quality, though patients neither feel nor behave like "customers" - and most don't know their GP is a business."
See, I did promise she would say that the heroes were money-grabbing scumbags. I wasn't being facetious or unfair to Polly at all. She really did it. Of course, her moaning about the "63%" pay rise over three years deliberately ignored the fact that meant they were being paid about £65K per year to work more than 44 hours a week, do home visits, answer calls in the middle of the night, and offer out of hours services. Now, putting aside Polly randomly throwing in irrelevant statements about how doctors now earn "more than the Lord Chancellor and circuit judges", she's decided to issue us with figures.
Figures always win the heart and minds, especially when you're talking about lowlife scumbag heroes like doctors. Sadly there is no evidence for the source of these figures, but Polly's argument that doctors are private businesses so there is no mechanism for financial control does somewhat contradict her figures. After all, if there are no mechanisms for financial control and the businesses are private, how on earth can she make a general statement about how much GPs choose to keep and how much they don't?
"In this era of mega-pay, it is unfair to begrudge the GPs their professional salary: there is a shortage of them. But it's also time to reopen the old Bevan settlement and bring the under-performers back in-house to be better managed as the NHS's most vital resource and key gatekeeper."
You have to admire her for her ability to switch from loving, to hating, to loving again! She doesn't begrudge them their money, she just doesn't want the bastards to have it.
"Polly Toynbee will be away until March"
Shame.
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