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About LinkBacksNot a difficult job, if you think being a GP isnt a difficult job then you really are a fool Rave.Originally Posted by Rave
Not a difficult job, if you think being a GP isnt a difficult job then you really are a fool Rave.
Its all relative, its obviously not as difficult job as driving a bus.
Damn all those GPs.
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well i suppose you run the risk of giving incorrect change or actually running on time
To be fair, bus drivers kill people too!
think of that one who got the cyclist under his wheels on the 38 i think it was, took him 3 miles to notice. (bendy bus).
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I'm pretty sure he noticed almost instantly....
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I lie, was only 1 mile, but 9 minuites without noticing.
rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish!
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standa...ath/article.do
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Yes, but a fully qualified GP can easily earn north of £100k a year, not £70k as Saracen suggested.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4920692.stm
Actually a bus driver probably averages a month's training before passing their PCV test. In any case I'm not saying that any idiot could be a GP at all, I'm saying that most people capable of scoring two or three of As at science/maths A-levels could do it. That's probably <20% of the population.I suppose its easy for a bus driver that can get his job after a few months training that almost any idiot can do to say that, but that'd be because they don't have a clue what they are talking about.
However, because there's a very limited number of places available at medical school demand for them far outstrips supply, and thus they can reject any candidate without 3 or 4 straight As. The limit on the number of doctors qualifying is definitely not a lack of capable candidates, it's a lack of training capacity. The lack of capacity continues further up the chain than universities too, as this years utter fiasco over applying for Junior Doctor positions illustrates.
They can be, but it's pretty unlikely. The GMC recognise that doctors will (almost inevitably) make mistakes. You're unlikely to get struck off for one mistake, rather you'll get struck off for gross negligence or from failing to learn from previous mistakes.GP's aren't just a medical professional, they also have to run their own business. If they make a mistake, they can be permenantly struck off
Read MD's column in the Private Eye, it's enlightening. This issue's is quite relevant, as it happens.
Edit: Bus drivers can potentially face more serious consequences than being struck off if they make a mistake, as this article shows. I used to drive through that very junction 3 times a day when I was driving the 60s.
My basic wage is £32K, so I'll probably make £36-37k this year with overtime. My job isn't particularly difficult in fairness, I'm paid that much because I have to work shifts (I.E. weekends, starting at 5am or finishing at 12.30am etc.) and because it's a supervisory role. I think that for what I do I'm pretty fairly remunerated. On days when things go badly, I generally make a positive contribution to the reliability and regularity of the bus service, which means more people get where they want to quicker than if I hadn't intervened.You say yourself you get the median wage for london which is currently around £35k
I think you'd find that more people think that's overpaid.
They could, but that's not my job at all. Bus drivers know which route they're on from looking at their rota.
Well, are you a GP? If so, enlighten me as to why your job is more difficult than, say, a policeman.
Quite why I've been led from a discussion of the rights and wrongs of laughing at Daily Mail articles to discussing GPs' salaries (no GPs having been explicitly mentioned in the original article) I'm not sure. But I'm always happy to oblige.
Last edited by Rave; 17-09-2008 at 10:45 PM.
What an horrendous story. Not something I would like to have witnessed.
Well, I'm not convinced about the "easily" bit. That's a rather subjective judgement. I didn't say that GPs couldn't or often didn't earn more than £70k. I just used it as a low-ball estimate precisely because you'd used another value judgement, which was that they had to be
to afford that property between them. My point was that two reasonably well-paid professional people would not necessarily find that at all beyond their means, but that professional person could be engineer, architect, doctor, dentist, lawyer, accountant, actuary and so on, but it could also equally well be someone running a reasonably successful small business, like a local butcher, pub landlord or a flower shop. It could also be a mid-level manager in any number of industries and there are certainly any number of local authority jobs that pay £70 or more. Are these all "ridiculously well-paid "?ridiculously well-paid
And, for that matter, while that link points out that the average is around the £100k mark, it also points out that some earn quite a bit more than that, and the direct implication of that is that some earn a fair bit less.
But it's not about what GPs are paid, but about that you seem to dismiss these [people are not deserving sympathy for having been screwed because they've got a reasonably expensive house. That, I'd guess, is why people seem to be suggesting, rightly or wrongly, the attitude that expressed smacks of envy.
Because of that subjective "ridiculously well-paid " remark. I'm trying to get a handle on what you regard as ridiculously well-paid, and GP was merely an off-the-cuff example. But pick any other similar example....
Quite why I've been led from a discussion of the rights and wrongs of laughing at Daily Mail articles to discussing GPs' salaries (no GPs having been explicitly mentioned in the original article) I'm not sure. But I'm always happy to oblige
a more direct comparison would surely be a paramedic to a bus driver?
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That is an average and does not actually reflect all GPs salaries. There are basically 2 types of GP:
1) Salaried- earn around £65000 and are not involved in the financial/management side of a GP practice
2) Partners- these people have invested money into the GP practice (and a large amount at that) and therefore have a lot of responsibility in management and financial means. They can earn around £120000 but have the associated risks.
Also please remember that they work bloody long hours, despite often the surgery hours not seeming long. Thanks to government interference there is so much paperwork that this often matches patient time.
And no, I am not a GP but have quite a few friends who are!
Not around too often!
Thank you all for continuing to argue with me, because what started off as a rearguard action on my part has forced me to think deeper and deeper about why I'm prejudiced against people who earn a lot of money. And I've come up with the answer.
In the case of the local authority- almost certainly. What a bloody gravy train local authority jobs have become. How the hell some 'diversity director' or similar can be on £100k while a cleaner makes a tenth of that is beyond me.
The point, I think, is that we are living in a 'meritocracy'. And the term 'meritocracy' was coined, quite rightly, as a perjorative term.But it's not about what GPs are paid, but about that you seem to dismiss these [people are not deserving sympathy for having been screwed because they've got a reasonably expensive house. That, I'd guess, is why people seem to be suggesting, rightly or wrongly, the attitude that expressed smacks of envy.
Because of that subjective "ridiculously well-paid " remark. I;m trying to get a handle on what you regard as ridiculously well-paid, and GP was merely an off-the-cuff example. But pick any other similar example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy
Essentially, if you're born with enough brainpower, and the will to use it, you can earn fabulous amounts of money. And, conversely, if you're not, you are stuffed. There are plenty of people out there who are unlucky enough to be born, not to put too fine a point on it, thick. They only have the brainpower to do jobs that, in our current system, pay the minimum wage. They could do 60 hours a week at £5.52 an hour and still only make £17.2k a year. On 42 hours a week- the average U.K. working week I believe (the longest in Europe, BTW), they make a smidge over 12k a year. Is it right that a salaried GP (according to Menthel, thank you for the info) makes more than 5 times as much?
I know that the GP has to spend far longer training and thus will spend less time earning, but it's still a massive difference. More to the point, at the current cost of living in this country, 12k a year just isn't enough to buy a home, raise a small family, and retire on a modest pension, even if there are two wage earners in the family.
I fully realise that communism doesn't work and that there has to be some financial incentive for clever and/or resourceful people to use their talents for the greater good rather than dossing along in an easy job like everyone else. I think, however, that the rewards for talent have become grossly disproportionate, and what's worse this has happened under the rule of a party that was founded to stand up for the interests of every worker.
And that's not good enough.
I suppose my visceral reaction of digust at the article was because I know that there are plenty of people who could never have a hope in hell of owning a £180,000 home, and so this handwringing about £15k sticks in my craw. And yes, I realise that in comparison to someone on the minimum wage, I'm grossly overpaid too.
Last edited by Rave; 18-09-2008 at 09:08 PM.
So at a time when we've never been shorter of physics graddies, are you saying their over paid?
There are always going to be some 'in-efficiencies', a classic example is tube drivers, who are grosly over paid, many people apply to be a tube driver, but get turned down, the wage is mainted by industrial action, their actions have a lot of clout. There are little problems like this, goverment MPs who set their own wage is a classic breakdown of the freemarket.
But a salesman who gets in a bank £30M in business, to pratically any bank he would goto? How can you say he should be paid less? He isn't paid because he's a nice bloke to work with, or because he went to the right school.......
So now your complaining that a frankly immoral event (betrayal of implied trust!) is perfectly ok, because they've got an asset that most people haven't?
I don't own a car, i consider them a insane luxury for anyone in london, you just don't need one at all if your willing to walk or cycle. Should i be "oh haha your car got nicked, Stupid moron left it near bethnal green".
Would you be laughing at me if i got screwed out of my bonus, by a sudden downturn? Or would you think, sh!t at over 55% tax thats a lot of money just lost too the government, with the economic slow down thats a family of 4's benefit gone...... Or would you just think "he didn't deserve it anyway". If the awnser was, well he was willing to take the risk, he has to be willing to take the loss, then your almost a decent person, but you should still have a bit of sympathy.
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my GP uses google everytime i go in. i have to stop myself from laughing at her. totally useless!
and this story is way funnier.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/2008091...f-ea4616c.html
Rave (19-09-2008)
I think the problem with this arguement is that it does not take into account responsibility. Someone getting minimum wage for flipping burgers in McDonalds or doing a cleaning job does not hold the same level of responsibility as a GP/doctor. As a doctor you hold responsibility for your patients and their families. You also do have to take responsibility for the actions of any junior staff and allied health professionals. That is also reflected in the indemnity insurance you have to pay- it is usually in the mid thousands for a GP. As a junior doctor I was paying in the high hundreds every year and we had little responsibility in that way! Its scary stuff!
I can see how this translates into high wages in other sectors as your responibility for other people's money etc could be construed as similar.
Not around too often!
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