At Least Some People Are Keeping Up With Hpi

[Confounded]

Good to see some people are getting good yearly pay rises over and above HPI.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6157219.stm

I don't want to diminish the work that doctors do, but this is another sad use for the money being pumped into the NHS. :angry:

[jonewer]

Good to see some people are getting good yearly pay rises over and above HPI.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6157219.stm

I don't want to diminish the work that doctors do, but this is another sad use for the money being pumped into the NHS. :angry:

Doctors are highly trained proffesionals who have invested at least 6 years in their training.

Good luck to them.

I'd rather 1 doctor earning £100k than 3 chav families sponging public money to spend on fags and special brew.

[A Fool & His Borrowed Money]

Doctors are highly trained proffesionals who have invested at least 6 years in their training.

Good luck to them.

I'd rather 1 doctor earning £100k than 3 chav families sponging public money to spend on fags and special brew.

I Agree,

Good pay for Work that's well needed & done well.

Those Tax-Abusing Community Resource Diversivication Co-Ordinators at the local Council who are on 150k a year on the other hand.......

[PropertyGuru]

I Agree,

Good pay for Work that's well needed & done well.

Those Tax-Abusing Community Resource Diversivication Co-Ordinators at the local Council who are on 150k a year on the other hand.......

unfair! Those 150k trough guzzlers have to lick asss for a LOT longer than 6 years! What would YOU rather do???

[Smell the Fear]

Let's face it, £100k is the bare minimum for a basic family life these days. Their pay may have doubled over the past 10 years, but house prices have tripled.

[homeless]

i wouldnt begrudge them a penny.

but what i dont like is the hold the BMA have on restricting the supply of doctors on no other grounds than keeping pressure on wages for themselves.

The BMA has been criticised for this in the past, with perfectly capable people being refused places at medical school.This is the real reason there is a shortage of doctors.

[Guest buggles]

The only doctor I want earning 100k is MY doctor, and s/he better be good. Yours can live on 25k do I care?

[Little Professor]

As a doctor, I can tell you GPs are the dregs of the medical profession. Those that were too stupid to pass their postgraduate exams or too dimwitted to succeed in interviews for hospital posts.

It's a tragedy that these incompetent buffoons are having their salaries raised while doing less work (no night on-calls, restricting home visits, passing more people on to overstretched A+E units). Meanwhile the hardworking hospital consultant (who have trained for many more years to become a consultant than GPs have) are stuck on half their salary. It's disgusting.

[brainclamp]

Supply is restricted, as with dentists, and lets face it - a G.P. should get paid what he is worth - which is less than the average total earnings for GPs of £236,000. What a nonsense for a great safe job!

Enable the free market to determine the level of G.Ps. Many Engineers study for 7 years - strange there is no £236,000 gross earnings per year waiting for them.

The teaching hospitals should be forced to greatly expand the number of teaching places by cutting lectures to DVD and concentrating resources on practicals, as the service from many dentists and doctors is terrible.

[BoomBoom]

Supply is restricted, as with dentists, and lets face it - a G.P. should get paid what he is worth - which is less than the average total earnings for GPs of £236,000. What a nonsense for a great safe job!

Enable the free market to determine the level of G.Ps. Many Engineers study for 7 years - strange there is no £236,000 gross earnings per year waiting for them.

The teaching hospitals should be forced to greatly expand the number of teaching places by cutting lectures to DVD and concentrating resources on practicals, as the service from many dentists and doctors is terrible.

Dentists and GP's in this country are both pushing to create a situation like exists in the USA. There you have single dentist practises making $2,000,000+ a year profit and they cater only to the most affluent. If you want basic dental care you're out of luck. Same goes for Dr's. Truth is there are lots of people who train as long or longer in more intellectually demanding areas and would be lucky to earn £25k a year.

[Confounded]

As a doctor, I can tell you GPs are the dregs of the medical profession. Those that were too stupid to pass their postgraduate exams or too dimwitted to succeed in interviews for hospital posts.

It's a tragedy that these incompetent buffoons are having their salaries raised while doing less work (no night on-calls, restricting home visits, passing more people on to overstretched A+E units). Meanwhile the hardworking hospital consultant (who have trained for many more years to become a consultant than GPs have) are stuck on half their salary. It's disgusting.

This was the reply I was going to post (although a little less direct) but chickened out as I felt it may not have been well received given the earlier comments. I am glad someone more qualified to make the point did so.

This whole site discusses the subject of value and at 100K (average) IMO GP's do not represent value. I am a Chartered Engineer with 7 years experience earning a 1/3 of their average salary let alone top salary. I am not at the top of my profession and given my ability am unlikely to be but I would not IMO be out of depth as a GP, a consultant no chance!

If you guys believe you are getting value for money for your GP’s I see little ground to complain about house prices which in comparison seem fair

[jonewer]

The teaching hospitals should be forced to greatly expand the number of teaching places by cutting lectures to DVD and concentrating resources on practicals, as the service from many dentists and doctors is terrible.

Have you ever been to university? I suspect not, if you had you would appreciate the value of a good lecture from a good lecturer.

As to the service, its probably because med schools tend to select blue-eyed goody-goody prefect teachers-pet (or techers child) types rather than people with real character and real intelligence.

Truth is there are lots of people who train as long or longer in more intellectually demanding areas and would be lucky to earn £25k a year.

Yup, and I should know 'cos I was one of them (except I was on £15 not £25)

[AvidFan]

Enable the free market to determine the level of G.Ps. Many Engineers study for 7 years - strange there is no £236,000 gross earnings per year waiting for them.

Yep. I studied for 8 years. I have the classic 3 degrees - a Bachelor and a Master of Science (both the top grade) and a Ph.D. I work over 60 hours a week for arguably the world's best technology company and I earn way less than half the salary of my local dentist or G.P.

I'm on a constant learning curve and I have a weight of commercial pressure that interferes significantly with my personal life. Work has to come first.

Doctors and G.P.'s get to repeat their basic skills over and over again without having to retrain, pick up a text book or ever suffer the frustration of a non-working piece of hardware or software on which your favour and hence your career seems to hang. My local dentist is strictly 9:15am to 4:30pm and he swaps his car every year (nothing smaller than a 5 series).

At least the suicide rate of dentists suggests that being paid insane amounts of money for absolutely no work doesn't make you happy.

I'd like to be rewarded for my efforts in life so far though, so I can decide for myself.

[BoomBoom]

Yep. I studied for 8 years. I have the classic 3 degrees - a Bachelor and a Master of Science (both the top grade) and a Ph.D. I work over 60 hours a week for arguably the world's best technology company and I earn way less than half the salary of my local dentist or G.P.

I'm on a constant learning curve and I have a weight of commercial pressure that interferes significantly with my personal life. Work has to come first.

Doctors and G.P.'s get to repeat their basic skills over and over again without having to retrain, pick up a text book or ever suffer the frustration of a non-working piece of hardware or software on which your favour and hence your career seems to hang. My local dentist is strictly 9:15am to 4:30pm and he swaps his car every year (nothing smaller than a 5 series).

At least the suicide rate of dentists suggests that being paid insane amounts of money for absolutely no work doesn't make you happy.

I'd like to be rewarded for my efforts in life so far though, so I can decide for myself.

You'll never get what you are worth working for someone else. Some people get closer than others, but the majority get well and truly screwed over.

[Confounded]

Yep. I studied for 8 years. I have the classic 3 degrees - a Bachelor and a Master of Science (both the top grade) and a Ph.D. I work over 60 hours a week for arguably the world's best technology company and I earn way less than half the salary of my local dentist or G.P.

I'm on a constant learning curve and I have a weight of commercial pressure that interferes significantly with my personal life. Work has to come first.

Doctors and G.P.'s get to repeat their basic skills over and over again without having to retrain, pick up a text book or ever suffer the frustration of a non-working piece of hardware or software on which your favour and hence your career seems to hang. My local dentist is strictly 9:15am to 4:30pm and he swaps his car every year (nothing smaller than a 5 series).

At least the suicide rate of dentists suggests that being paid insane amounts of money for absolutely no work doesn't make you happy.

I'd like to be rewarded for my efforts in life so far though, so I can decide for myself.

Dentist are an even greater anomaly than GP's for what they get paid for doing what they do. One of my school friends is a dentists and graduated at the same time as me. So far she has been on 2 extended periods of traveling and on returning works a 3 day week as that is all she needs to do. She is single and in the early stage of her career and can still afford to do this.

Great career if you can maintain a cheery disposition!

[Smell the Fear]

As a doctor, I can tell you GPs are the dregs of the medical profession. Those that were too stupid to pass their postgraduate exams or too dimwitted to succeed in interviews for hospital posts.

It's a tragedy that these incompetent buffoons are having their salaries raised while doing less work (no night on-calls, restricting home visits, passing more people on to overstretched A+E units). Meanwhile the hardworking hospital consultant (who have trained for many more years to become a consultant than GPs have) are stuck on half their salary. It's disgusting.

The fact that you posted this rubbish tells me that you are almost certainly not a doctor. I'm sure GPs could well argue that the heart surgeon who repeats a small number of procedures over and over for an entire career is overpaid - many people could learn to do his job, they are not the dextrous geniuses they like to make themselves out to be.

I think a lot of people are forgetting that GPs are self employed and running a small business.

FFS the guy who runs your local chip shop/petrol station/plumbing co or whatever often earns £100k also.

As for Brainclamp's ridiculous £236k gross income point - what is your point? What relevance does gross earnings have? They have to pay expenses and staff salary out of that, only the net figure is of any interest.

Edited November 29, 2006 by Smell the Fear

[bpw]

I think a lot of people are forgetting that GPs are self employed and running a small business.

This is a good point, but I don't think it justifies a 100k salary for what is a low risk professional business. GPs get educated to do a job they practice for the rest of their lives - there is no creativity or true entrepreneurialship involved. In addition, I don't see there is real competition since the BMA restricts the supply of doctors using quality as an argument.

I would guess that a fair wage for a doctor should be in the 50-70k range which puts them in the top few% of incomes. Of course, under labor the biggest fattest hogs are the ones who get to the front of the trough so what else can we expect. In labor land you get most if you do least (doctors, police, politicians, city council workers etc.) Do you ever hear them complain about their pensions? Are they at risk of employers defaulting on their pensions plans ! Of course not hogs rule in Browns' animal farm.

[Smell the Fear]

This is a good point, but I don't think it justifies a 100k salary for what is a low risk professional business. GPs get educated to do a job they practice for the rest of their lives - there is no creativity or true entrepreneurialship involved. In addition, I don't see there is real competition since the BMA restricts the supply of doctors using quality as an argument.

I would guess that a fair wage for a doctor should be in the 50-70k range which puts them in the top few% of incomes. Of course, under labor the biggest fattest hogs are the ones who get to the front of the trough so what else can we expect. In labor land you get most if you do least (doctors, police, politicians, city council workers etc.) Do you ever hear them complain about their pensions? Are they at risk of employers defaulting on their pensions plans ! Of course not hogs rule in Browns' animal farm.

It's not a salary, it's a profit from the business they own and manage.

Salaried GPs earn around £60k, which doesn't look excessive compared to other professional jobs.

FFS newly qualified accountants in London (25 year olds) can earn £50-60k easily. Partners in law and accounting firms the length and breadth of the country earn £100k+, some earn such multiples of this.

Why do people insist on comparing their GP to some 2 bit engineer who may be good for number crunching but generally have little in the way of interpersonal skills? Tip for all of you engineers - most high paying jobs require the ability to communicate well. If most engineers are honest they will admit that they like numbers and calculations because it allows them to generally avoid contact with people.

[bpw]

It's not a salary, it's a profit from the business they own and manage.

Salaried GPs earn around £60k, which doesn't look excessive compared to other professional jobs.

FFS newly qualified accountants in London (25 year olds) can earn £50-60k easily. Partners in law and accounting firms the length and breadth of the country earn £100k+, some earn such multiples of this.

Why do people insist on comparing their GP to some 2 bit engineer who may be good for number crunching but generally have little in the way of interpersonal skills? Tip for all of you engineers - most high paying jobs require the ability to communicate well. If most engineers are honest they will admit that they like numbers and calculations because it allows them to generally avoid contact with people.

Muscleman seems to be delusional. How do you think billion dollar projects get built? By engineers using sign language? Or do we just send e-mails to the draughtsmen, designers, engineers, procurement specialists, QA/QC managers, fabricators, r&d support .......

You are living in a strange world if the engineers you know spend all their time doing calcs and not communicating the results.

If you want to make a point about engineers it should be that they have failed to communicate the fact there are engineers who fix tellys and engineers who design some of the most complex systems on earth. I've worked on multi-billion dollar projects and can assure you the leadership are some of the smartest people around. As for comparing us with bean counting accountants - well that's laughable. Accountants are drones with no creativity, no latitude for personal thoughts and in my experience second rate educations from second rate colleges - ever heard of an accounting degree from Oxford or Imperial! And who do you know that graduated from these types of a-rank colleges and ended up as accountants. You'll be interested to know the leaders in most oil companies are all engineers.

Now, be a grown-up and admit you know little about engineering.

[BoomBoom]

Muscleman seems to be delusional. How do you think billion dollar projects get built? By engineers using sign language? Or do we just send e-mails to the draughtsmen, designers, engineers, procurement specialists, QA/QC managers, fabricators, r&d support .......

You are living in a strange world if the engineers you know spend all their time doing calcs and not communicating the results.

If you want to make a point about engineers it should be that they have failed to communicate the fact there are engineers who fix tellys and engineers who design some of the most complex systems on earth. I've worked on multi-billion dollar projects and can assure you the leadership are some of the smartest people around. As for comparing us with bean counting accountants - well that's laughable. Accountants are drones with no creativity, no latitude for personal thoughts and in my experience second rate educations from second rate colleges - ever heard of an accounting degree from Oxford or Imperial! And who do you know that graduated from these types of a-rank colleges and ended up as accountants. You'll be interested to know the leaders in most oil companies are all engineers.

Now, be a grown-up and admit you know little about engineering.

Sadly such is the demise of engineering in this country that most people think an engineer is the guy that installs your cable TV.

[StainlessSteelCat]

Sadly my missus's GP seems little more than a Google NHS database monkey. Last few times I've attended with her - the details were near wordlessly punched into the computer and missus handed a printout (which told us less than what I'd already read on the interweb). Missus seemed happy enough though.

[dog]

Doctors are highly trained proffesionals who have invested at least 6 years in their training.

Good luck to them.

I'd rather 1 doctor earning £100k than 3 chav families sponging public money to spend on fags and special brew.

The length of training is not a valid metric. Many professions take between 5 and 10 years to reach accreditation. An engineer for example rarely gets to CEng before the age of 25 and can expect to get between £30,000 and £40,000 after accreditation.

If a person is going to be paid £100K, then I also expect a high level of dedication. The fact is that GPs only see patients (at their practices) for a few hours day and most delegate their call out duties. It also seems incredible to me that GPs are allowed to do second jobs in the private sector. Such practices are forbidden in many professions. Can you see a BA pilot being allowed to moonlight for Ryan air? If a doctor is being paid £100K then his full attention should be on his general practice work.

[Guest muttley]

Doctors and G.P.'s get to repeat their basic skills over and over again without having to retrain, pick up a text book

I doubt that is true.

As for GPs having the highest suicide rate...

Also divorce rate, depression, drug addiction, one of the highest rates of alcoholism and a much greater risk of being verbally abused or physically attacked at work.

I wouldn't do that job for 100k pa.

[AvidFan]

The point is that Doctors, Lawyers, Estate Agents, Hospital workers, Dentists and council workers are all SERVICE jobs at the end of the day.

My gripe is that these people have and will continue to tap into a rich seam of money made available by the Labour government. I agree that these types of people should be highly paid if they keep you and I ticking along with the minimum of "down time". But they don't.

And moreover, since this country is 70% service (!!!!!) with the rest of those in employment likely to be in a legal or financial profession, it's a top-heavy inverted pyramid waiting to fall. All I see are overpaid service workers servicing overpaid service workers who perform a service for whole communities of service workers. I don't see any net value being added.

I suppose that's why the national debt is at a record high and private debt is at a record high. We're a country of service people who make nothing and create no wealth at all - but we still have to buy our energy and raw materials from someone else to be able to carry on this pathetic existence.

A socialist state has always been shown to cause huge distortions in the reward versus effort curve as there is little motivation to achieve anything extraordinary. Instead, essential workers have the government by the short-and-curlies and can demand ever increasing pay settlements for ever decreasing amounts of effort while the masses suffer and the machine grinds to a halt.

That's where we are with the Labour government. It's an extreme socialist state but no-one seems to realise it.

[BTLlivingthedream]

Have you ever been to university? I suspect not, if you had you would appreciate the value of a good lecture from a good lecturer.

As to the service, its probably because med schools tend to select blue-eyed goody-goody prefect teachers-pet (or techers child) types rather than people with real character and real intelligence.

Yup, and I should know 'cos I was one of them (except I was on £15 not £25)

Speaking of which a friends son spent 8 years training for his lecturer position (degree, masters, phd) during which time he ran up debts, was unable to start a family, get on the housing ladder and lived off around an average of 8000 a year etc. He now earns 24k. Average academic salaries = 33k. Minimally you need 8 years training under your belt before you can be a lecturer.