guests often include doctors

This is journalism?

H Ellis, Manchester,

An organisation that rents some large function rooms, applies to have an extension of two hours. Some of the people who attend / rent the function rooms happen to be doctors. I am sure that many other professionals attend such functions, but they do not get branded as drunkards. I wonder why.

Maya, London,

I fail to see why this is a story. This is about rooms that are hired out for weddings etc and the guests that attend those functions. We do not lambast the clergy for the occasional misbehaviour of guests at church hall weddings or local councillors for drunken doings at town hall weddings. If there are a few drunken revellers who attend weddings at BMA House (something I've never seen and I live pretty near) it is not the fault of the BMA and definitely not the fault of doctors as a whole. This story is utter rubbish and you can only wonder how it came to be published.

Steve, London,

I am surprised and dissapointed at the DoH comment both as an ex DoH civil servant and current chair of a Borough Planning Committee. The extension of opening hours does cause upset to local residents and we see this as a frequent issue in such cases but to try to connect this with GP opening hours is totally illogical and a lower blow that even I would expect from the DoH

Cllr Dr Howard Bloom, Crawley, West Sussex

Althouogh the piece has a point, the ending has noe relevance. I am fed up to the back teeth of this "doctorbashing" by the DoH and media (same thing?). What a cheap, ill informed and pathetic snipe at the medical profession. If I recall doctors have consistently come top of the "most trusted profession" tables....guess who sits firmly in the relegation zone time after time...

Ross Dyer-Smith, Chesterfield, United Kingdom

I am not sure how letting BMA building to wedding parties is any reflection on professionalism of GPs. I think it just shows the levels this govt is prepared to stoop to make a point. These are the same people who employ their relatives for tax evasion and take undeclared donations to fill up their coffers. I don't think they have any moral high ground from where they can shout at others from.

Gaurav Gupta, Broadstairs,

Does any one believe the National Audit Office when the chairman has been entertained by many companies that he is investigating, spending £300,000 of tax payers money on travel to the Bahamas with his wife etc. Sir John Boune has now retired.

Furthermore, we begrudge GPs their salary, yet are paying a non-dom £90,000 per month to run a nationalised bank. Meanwhile Patricia Hewitt, previous health secretary is now working for Boots, a company which has successfully bid for many NHS services.

The country need to get its priorities right!

Paul, Coventry, Warwickshire

The press have clearly become a goverment tool!! Intelligent journalists have failed to see GP opening hours as a smoke screen for the slow gradual privatisation.

RIP NHS thanks to this Goverment & Press

Paul, Cambridge , Cambs

Hold on - this is the same BMA house that on the july the 7th bombings, the doctors that were there at a meeting came flooding out of and treated people as they lay in the street.

As the majority of the people above are saying - is it not time for the government to stop "doctor bashing"?

The goodwill that was the backbone of the NHS has been severely eroded by the current government - this is just another example.

Steve, Sheffield,

The BMA hires out its buildings for wedding receptions etc., like many a church hall & social club, and has applied for a licence extension for the benefit of its customers.

1) Well at least they apply for a licence which is more than can be said for the House of Commons; taken from www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/G19.pdf
"Bars in the House of Commons operate without a licence, and do not keep to the permitted hours laid down by the Licensing Acts"

2) To Stu, North Sydney: The BMA's primary role is being the Union & the volantary profesional body of the Doctors ... of course it's going to take their point of view. It would be failing in it's duty to serve its members otherwise. It would appear that like many others you do not know the difference between the BMA & the GMC.

3) Shock! Horror! Doctors attend wedding receptions! Whatever next? Doctors attend football matches & are thus the cause of all football hooliganism?!

The DoH comment? An illconsidered comment to say the least.

Graham Racher, London, UK

I must say I do find this anti-Dr and anti-GP media very interesting. As British medical student nearing the end of my studies (don't worry everyone I paid my fees myself) I will try working in this country for a couple of years but if this negativity doesn't improve I'm off. See ya. Why the hell would I stay in a country that isn't going to value or appreciate what I have sacrificed much of my life for. Perphaps for doing something as bad as studying medicine I should be jailed, flogged and fed to tigers. No wonder in the Uk we have such a terrible attitude in the schools that "it's not cool to do well at school."

Med student, Dundee,

Doctors eh? Diagnosis is not their strong point and the BMA bends over backwards to find them innocent of any wrongdoing, never mind the evidence. They like a drink or two and become somewhat rowdy. So? It's Britain isn't it?

Stu, North Sydney, Nova Scotia

As mentioned by the poster above, what exactly does hiring out the BMA building have to do with GPs' opening hours? Perhaps the DoH spokesman could, just as tenuously, link GPs' hours to the lost billions through incompetently negotiated PFI deals - now there's something for the public to worry about.

Ian Street, Doncaster, UK

Along with many of my GP colleagues I am fed up with the ongoing torrent of demoralising anti-GP spin orchestrated from 10 Downing Street. This article takes that campaign to a new low.

I assume that, as the same story has appeared simultaneously in several papers today, editors have had instructions from Mr Brown to publish this today.

It won't be long now before the press can stop decrying the NHS - in a few months from now Gordon Brown will have sold off the family silver. He has done in everyone's pensions and sold off the nation's gold reserves. Your much hated NHS appears to be next on the auctioneer's block.

Dr T Martin, Wells, UK

I think the DH thinks all is fair in this battle for the hearts and minds.There is no doubt that they are spinning everyone into a state of high vertigo.Many of us never visit Tavistock sqare and to use an application in Camden council to smear all doctors is mind boggling.Here is how the politicians do it (A report from the Guardian January 2006)
if the novice MP then wants to celebrate his arrival, he or she will be spoiled for choice. Counting from memory - a notoriously unreliable faculty where alcohol is concerned - I can recall at least 10 bars which very definitely do serve drink. They range from the Bishops' Bar in the House of Lords, where bishops hardly ever go, to the Smoking Room of the House of Commons, where MPs may soon be forbidden to smoke.

In between lie the Kremlin - as the Strangers' Bar used to be called, on account of its largely Labour clientele - to Annie's Bar, which is named after a long-dead barmaid. And up in the stratosphere, close to Big Ben

Jayaprakash A Gosalakkal, Leicester, UK

Another 'do as I say but not as I do' story. Anybody else getting really fed up with this?

judy, Liverpool, England

This article is an index of how low a bloated, political class are prepared to stoop to denigrate anyone who opposes them or their self-serving, vote-catching policies. Such venality in our beloved Leaders is to be expected. The Press that plays along should hang its head in shame AND watch their backs. As the domestication of the BBC demonstrates so clearly, their parlous freedoms will be next.
Declaration of Interest. I am a doctor, a GP. This does not equate with "Spawn of the Devil" however much the DoH and their manangement minions would like us to believe so. I am, as I type, on-call and have been since February the eigth. I like my work and do it willingly but I AM tired of being clobbered by the chattering classes, the Islingtonistas. A moment's thought would lead anyone sensate to wonder what the agenda of the consistent anti-doctor spin might be? Doctors stand between patients and the sale of the NHS to the Private Sector. They are a bloody nuisance. RIP NHS.

Maureen Douglas, Isle of Mull, Argyll

Perhaps this is why so few take their advice seriously on this matter as witnessed on every Friday and Saturday night. You have to be the change you want to see in people, anything short of that and no one will pay attention to anything you say irrespective of how important and life saving it may be.

Farrukh, Woking, UK

Any medical story which distracts people from the gradual privatisation of the NHS, the current polyclinic disaster and the £12billion wasted on non-existent IT must be a good thing for the DoH.

Ian Williams, London, UK

As usual it's one law for the do-gooder bossy boots and another law for everyone else.

Ian Burgess, Bristol,

The last quote seems somewhat illogical, here we have two quite separate entities in question, the guests of the weddings hosted by the BMA on the one hand, and 'lazy' GPs on the other. Linking these two simply seems to be a crude simplification of a profession that is hardly worthy of derision.

Daniel, Cambridge,