Well goodness me!

What is the use of having doctors if they only work city hours?

Perhaps we are being stupid by falling ill in the evening, or weekend, or, mercy me, in the night.

It is time that the overpaid doctors accepted that their professional status relies on the service they provide.

Thank heaven we have the talents of the para-medics and the ambulance service to save our lives during the doctor's 'lets play golf' time.

Alan Bond, LANCASTER, england

A legacy from bungling Alan Milburn who left mainstream politics 'to spend more time with his family'.
GPs and consultants have been laughing all the way to the bank since the implementation of Milburn's 'Action for Change' . Don't worry, the taxpayers' pockets are bottomless, are nt they ?

Rick, London, England

I worked as a hospital consultant in the UK for years: putting in 60 - 80 hours a week on the (A&E) frontline, in appalling conditions. Like most of my generation, I was certain that managers, ministers and health economists neither comprehended nor appreciated my workload or my input. Consequently, I was happy to escape to another jurisdiction as the Blairite exercise to micro-manage consultants began to bite. This political “DisRespect” campaign, carefully orchestrated by Alan Milburn and John Reid (remember them?), led to routine distrust and disbelief of consultants, all-round. So it comes as no surprise that those behind the rushed, imposed new consultants’ contract got it so wrong. Not only did they get a reduced “output” from better paid, strait-jacketed consultants, they also guaranteed that despondent senior doctors would have little interest in future invitations to “go the extra yard”. Truly, the Blairite chickens are coming home to roost.

LCL, Cork, Ireland

Why do doctors and consultants seem to think that they are a special case? I would be inclined to give Nurses a bigger pay-rise as they do the real hard work like caring for the patients while doctors and consultants seem to find time to work in the private sector before working in the NHS.Working less hours for more money brings in the greed factor with these people.

Tom Slattery, Paisley, Scotland

Let us be clear about this.

As with the GP contract, the Dept of Health underestimated the quality of work already being done by consultants. We were subjected to pernicious whispering campaigns & claims of consultants spending time on the golf course instead of seeing patients.
Well, the govt insisted on verifying the hours worked & imposed strict controls on local arrangements. They have sacrificed any goodwill extant & will have to muddle out of this on their own. But the situation is going to get worse because the current reforms still pretend that staff are not working to capacity. They will come a cropper but by then the culprits will have moved on.

Saleem, London, UK

Just another example of the stupidity of Gordon Brown, the fool just throw huge amounts of cash at the HNS with out any control over what it was used for. Now we have the highest paid (lazy) consultants on the planet and can't aford nurses.
Brown is to be the next PM, god help us! Roll on the next general election when we can rid this country of the whole sorry lot of them

D Case, Newquay, UK

Who on earth thinks that politicians make managers? Until you have a system, as in France, where the state pays the bulk of the cost of any treatment but the treatment is delivered by competing private sector companies this will continue. Tory, Labour or Lib Dem it will always be thus.

eddie reader, birmingham, uk