The results are in and . . .

We posted about the GMC consulting on whether it should regulate doctors’ lives outside of medicine and the results are in and can be read here together with some GMC thoughts on the issue.

In summary in answer to the question do you think the GMC should regulate doctors’ live outside of medicine the results were:

No              1100          94%
Yes                54            5%
Not sure       13            1%
Total         1167

If you look at the percentages if you were a politician you would regard this as a landslide result of a mandate saying that the GMC SHOULD NOT regulate doctors’ lives outside medicine.

However dear reader read further down and see that the amount of column inches given to the comments of the Yes voters is proportionally greater than that given to the No voters as is that given to the Not sure voters.

Read further and see that:

“Given the very large response to this question, we have decided to ask a specific question about doctors lives outside medicine when formal consultation starts later this month.”

Interesting words those for they remind us of the “ratification” of the treaty of Lisbon whereby if the politicians did not like the result of a referendum they wanted they have another one or the old joke that if the British ever solve the Irish question the Irish will change the question.

We are sure an elite team of (Daily Mail?) journalists will be at work drafting the question so as to get the right answer. Here is our crude attempt:

Should the GMC have the power to regulate the personal lives of all doctors if they are paedophiles?

Should result in more Yes votes than the previous question comrades shouldn’t it?

As someone once said on 10 July 1790:

“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.”

John Philpot Curran Irish judge to which we would add a term some of us heard from modern(ish) military circles in Iraq:

“Stay frosty gents”.

We await the publication of the specific question with interest and whether the formal consultation will be along the lines of the Future Forum consultation on the NHS reforms.

Praise be to the Party for giving us the illusion of democracy within an increasingly Party controlled “free” state.