They have spent six years in study, and accumulated tens of thousands of pounds in debt, only to be treated in this way. The mother of one who qualified last year (with his parents paying tuition fees for four years out of the six-year course) reacts with disgust.

Her son has just worked two consecutive 13-hour shifts, from
11am to midnight. The following day he was on the ward at 7.30am so
only hospital accommodation
allowed him to get some rest. To make him pay for the privilege is criminal. So much for all the talk about hours being reduced.

All 30,000 junior doctors had their contracts terminated, forcing them to apply for 18,000 jobs under the chaotic Medical Training Application Service.

The new training system, called Modernising Medical Careers, has been dubbed "Massive Medical Cull", with hundreds of our best young doctors heading for Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. Some left medicine altogether in disgust. As well as competition from EU countries, the Law Lords last week opened the door to thousands of doctors trained outside Europe.

The British Medical Association believes it could be even worse this year, with an average of three applicants per job. Meanwhile, with Labour's impeccable NHS logic, Polish doctors on expensive short-term contracts have been imported to fill gaps in general practice.

The application process has been dubbed weird and Kafkaesque, with one describing it as "waffling answers to ludicrous, meaningless questions, where a one-day course in health and safety is given the same importance as a PhD".

The successful applicants have grasped at anything available, uprooting themselves and their families if they are married. Many of these short-term contracts have now expired.

You may have forgotten who was the Secretary of State presiding
over this disaster. It was Patricia Hewitt. And where is she now? Luxuriating in a fat cat job in the private sector. Being a New Labour failure means never having to say "sorry".



HEAVEN preserve us from the pomposity and arrogance of politicians. The Deputy Chief Constable of North Yorkshire,
Adam Briggs, has a wartime
German clock on the wall of his
office. It came from a captured U-boat and was bequeathed to him by his father, who served throughout the
war with the Royal Navy. He is
always happy to explain its origin to visitors.

Enter Phil Willis, the Harrogate Lib Dem MP, who says: "I think it is a rather foolish thing to put a piece of Nazi memorabilia in the office of a high-ranking officer." Can you envisage a more disgraceful piece of self-seeking humbug?

I can tell Willis, who is clearly ignorant about these matters, that even among fighting soldiers in the Second World War, there was extra respect for the brave sailors who suffered unimaginable deaths in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, as hundreds of ships were sunk by U-boats. Mr Briggs is rightly proud of his father's bravery and the clock is a daily reminder of the debt owed to his generation.

Willis adds: "I am sure it has been done in innocence rather than in any kind of anti-Semitic way." Anti-Semitic? Who dragged that into the picture? Is the police chief expected to be grateful to the MP for having been absolved from any suggestion of anti-Semitism?

It is outrageous that a respected senior police officer should be embarrassed and insulted in this way to make a cheap headline for a minor politician. If Willis wants to retain any shred of respect, he will write to the Deputy Chief Constable, apologising, and saying that, on reflection, he realises he has acted like a thoughtless idiot.



ANOTHER public figure bites the dust after being secretly filmed by a tabloid. I don't know if the characters who engage in these exposes – for example, dressing up in a sheikh's outfit to coax indiscretions out of some hapless figure – still call themselves journalists. It doesn't seem like journalism to me.

So far they have caught Sophie, Countess of Wessex, when she
worked in PR, Laurence Dallaglio, the Formula One chief Max Mosley, and plenty of others. They do their dirty work very cleverly and they have expensive lawyers.

In Mosley's case, the fact that his father was the Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, made him ripe for "Nazi" insinuations.

To quote President Putin's response to media rumours that he was planning to remarry: "I have always reacted negatively to those who, with their snotty noses and erotic fantasies, prowl into others' lives."

Right on, Vladimir.