I WANT GREAT GMC MEMBERS

Mark Shaw QC. At £10,000 Per Day - A Lie is Always the Truth

2009-03-16T15:11:00.000-07:00

Mark Shaw QC is the General Medical Council's £10,000 per day henchman. You can read all about him here. Mark Shaw eats doctors for dinner. He is the man who protects the General Medical Council from any legal action at all. He is the kind of barrister who argues black is white and vice versa depending how much he is paid.

"He has "complete moral and intellectual integrity" and proves "immensely knowledgeable and reassuring" Chambers UK

We beg to differ on Chambers UK's assessment. Mark Shaw QC misleads with eloquence. A lie is never a lie when told by Mark Shaw QC. It becomes the truth by virtue of being a QC. Moreover, when a lie is required to cover the tracks of his client, he obtains support from third parties to make his line of argument the Truth. Of course, the line between truth and dishonesty is blurred for Mark Shaw because he knows how to slide cleverly diverting the court, using the puffer fish effect so the judge does not notice the actual issues at play. As a barrister who spends a great majority of time watching the violations of human rights and partaking in it, we wonder why his website tells us that he specialises in Human Rights Law. Why practise human rights law if he gets paid large amounts of money for violating the rights of doctors?

Blackstones Chambers states the following

"Public law and human rights cases are often at the cutting edge of legal developments in the UK and serve to help maintain the balance between the interests of the individual and the State. For many years, Blackstone Chambers has been the home of barristers dedicated to ensuring that the rights and interests not only of individuals but also of regulatory bodies and companies are recognised and protected"

Really? Perhaps Mark Shaw QC would like to tell us all how many doctors human rights are violated by the GMC and how many cases he has taken part in?

Dr Sheila Mann. The Rogue Psychiatrist

2008-07-25T01:13:00.000-07:00

Dr Sheila Mann - Out of Control

Suggested by Dr EM.

Psychiatry (specifically of old age). Consultant Psychiatrist, North Essex Mental Health Partnership Trust. Member, BMA. Fellow & former Vice-President (& Ex-officio member of the Council) Royal College of Psychiatrists. Member, Specialist Training Authority. Member: Lord Chancellor's Forum on Mental Incapacity.

Famous in the case Pal v GMC.
We found this.

Conducted the infamous " discrete inquiry" but could not spell discreet. Criticised by Harris HHJ for spelling error. Psychiatrist turned private detective was the GMC's health screener responsible for a number of human rights abuses in the GMC. Having left as screener following the Pal fiasco, our sources tells us that she was re-employed as panellist so she can shaft more doctors. Any doctor who has been assessed by Mann should have their case reviewed independently.

From Transcripts read this am.

Harris HHJ - Is this gentleman, this health screener, who presumably is medically qualified, is he?

MISS COLLIER: The health screener, he or she is medically qualified, yes.

JUDGE HARRIS: He doesn't know the correct spelling or meaning of the word discreet presumably, which is pretty alarming.

MISS COLLIER: My Lord, presumably that is intended to be e-e-t.

JUDGE HARRIS: Yes.

JUDGE HARRIS: I see.

MISS COLLIER: So, my Lord, that is Article 8. My submissions on that are concluded because we don't rely on limitation for the purposes of this Application.

There is a second claim under the Human Rights Act under Article 14. If one goes to my skeleton, after Article 8 there are submissions on Article 10 which are no longer relevant because the claim is withdrawn, and one goes to page 24 of the skeleton argument. Her allegation that she has been discriminated against on grounds of her opinions is now at paragraph 3(k) of the particulars of claim at pages 24-25.

JUDGE HARRIS: This expression "discrete enquiries", are we meant to read this as meaning discrete in its proper sense or as a misapplication of the word of discreet in the sense of -----

MR JAY: My Lord, I corrected the spelling earlier on but I missed that one. It is discreet with two e's.

JUDGE HARRIS: A lot of people seem to like this word discrete (c-r-e-t-e) but don't understand it and don't know how to spell it and use it inappropriately.

MR JAY: I did put it right on the previous page.

Stephen Farnworth

2008-07-25T00:43:00.000-07:00

Helmet due to the repeated number of complaints regarding him. The GMC has refused to instigate any complaints procedure regarding him.

Dr Brian Douglas Keighley FRCGP (GMC No. 1328428)

2008-07-25T00:39:00.000-07:00

Dubious Personal Life

Dr Alexandra Simone Jacqueli Freeman BM (GMC No. 3296060)

2008-07-25T00:34:00.001-07:00

Nice lady doctor at the GMC
Her name is longer than her salary at the GMC

CLIENT: GMC
MATTER: Independent External Review
FILE REF: MLS/G3352/18/EWS
DATE: 12 September 2002

Dr Alex Freeman said that she had been involved in the medico-political scene since 1990, initially in relation to the doctors' hours campaign. She had a pedigree through the BMA junior doctors' committee in that respect. She had always had an interest in the GMC, in the sense of getting young doctors to be heard. She had stood in the 1999 election as an independent candidate and a bit to her surprise had been elected. Her election address was light-hearted but she said that she would represent the interests of doctors on the GMC.

She was at the time of her election a Registrar in general practice. Since qualifying she had become a part-time principal in general practice.

When she was first elected to the GMC she was invited to attend for an induction day. She met the President and the chairs of the various committees. Alex Freeman had started at the GMC in November 1999 and her membership lasted until the end of October 2004. However, the recent suggested changes at the GMC which would be voted on the next day might bring that forward to June 2003. She would vote against those proposals as she thought they would curtail the amount of representation which she could offer to her electorate.

The GMC had various unofficial groupings. One was a grouping of general practitioners. They went to dinner at the Royal College of General Practitioners and it was a completely informal affair. Another group which Alex Freeman was involved with was the Womens' Group, which she organised.

Alex Freeman could not recall who was present at the meeting of the General Practitioners informal grouping. She thought that Donald Irvine was there, Dr Goss, Sir Denis Pereira Gray and Dr Rennie amongst others.

Alex Freeman was not politically-motivated to speak before her peers, she felt that she spoke for doctors who had elected her. She had the impression that Donald Irvine had tended to listen mostly to lay members and appointed members, rather than elected medical members in any event. In order to speak to a Council meeting one had to try to catch the eye of the President or the Chief Executive. The Chief Executive would then write names on a list, who were then called upon to speak.

Alex Freeman said that she and Dr Edwin Borman had been good friends for some time.

Alex Freeman had sat on the ARC, PPC, the Interim Orders Committee, had been invited to sit on the Registration Committee (although she had never actually sat) and the PCC. She had been asked to sit on panels of all the fitness to practice committees except the Health Committee. In relation to other members there was never a question of whether somebody should be co-opted. People were just asked whether they were available or not.

When Alex Freeman had been elected, there had been a 50% turnover of membership. She had been sent a pack containing the rules and other documents. She had not really been trained in how to sit on Committees, but simply learned while she sat on the job, as it were. She was in a sense thrown right in at the deep end. However, when external associates were appointed, the GMC organised some training for them including about cultural awareness etc. However, Alex Freeman had still not received cultural awareness training although she had participated in training for the new associates as an ‘experienced’ PCC panelist. The same system appeared to operate with other committees, such as interim orders where, again, Alex Freeman had never received any formal training.

Alex Freeman had been elected to the ARC and sat on that committee. The oddity was that every member had to put a preference either to sit or not to sit on any particular committee or whether they were indifferent about the matter. It was possible that a person could be voted onto a committee even if they had positively said that they were not interested in sitting on it. All the forms were returned to Peter Pinto de Sa.

Alex Freeman described the PCC committee room. It was a sort of horseshoe arrangement. The result was that a member of the panel might end up virtually opposite or next to the defendant doctor. That could be very intimidating, especially for a woman.

Alex Freeman had sat on three GMC committees where recusal applications had been made - one in the ARC, and two in the PCC. She herself had offered a recusal when sitting on the Preliminary Proceedings Committee because she practised in the same geographical area as the doctor under investigation. The rest of the panel had asked her to withdraw her offer of a voluntary recusal because she was the only doctor on the panel from the same specialty. She had seen other recusals where a panel member had, for example, taught a particular doctor under investigation. Recusals were not unusual, and nor were applications. For example, the President himself was challenged during the Bristol case.

Alex Freeman was not "pitched against the GMC". That was not the case at all. It was simply that as an elected member of the GMC she felt concerned that it appeared many decisions it made were made before members had even seen them or asked to consider them. The recommendations made in Council papers were rarely defeated or amended. Lots of the items were presented by the Chief Executive or members of staff, although sometimes they were also presented by Committee chairs. Often members were presented with a series of recommendations and sometimes there was very little discussion about them. There were moves to push them through to a vote before they had been discussed sufficiently. There was an ethos of the bureaucracy managing the Council, which in Alex Freeman’s view was wrong.

George Staple asked whether a certain amount of management of the Council was not necessary to get the Council's business done. Alex Freeman said that the problem was that the standing orders were not followed. Some members were quite naive and just voted in the way they were asked to. That applied to both lay and medical members. It was inevitable that some members would simply be lobby-fodder. Elections threw up all sorts of different people.

Dr Borman asked some questions about it and Alex Freeman wanted to know what the expenditure on the President was. Dr Borman therefore asked his questions and also asked about the President's position. It was the first time a lot of members found out about the President's honorarium and the fact that it was equivalent to a consultant's A+ merit award. Alex Freeman had presumed beforehand that the President would merely be reimbursed for his expenses. The award seemed to be high as she imagined that Donald Irvine's annual income before he became President of the GMC would have been that of a GP, possibly around the £80,000 mark and that he would be reimbursed to cover lost earnings. She also discovered for the first time how much was given to screeners as honoraria. All that amounted to £800,000. Consequently there was a gap of about a missing £1 million. She could not understand where the rest of the money had gone as she could do a rough calculation of the expenses involved in running one or two panels of the PCC. The explanation for the accounts only covered half of the £1.7 million expenditure on members' fees and expenses included in it. That had set Dr Colman on the trail of the expenses issue and the whole issue about the GMC being a charity and its members being trustees. Alex Freeman had wanted to find out what was in the accounts because she was now a trustee she would be financially responsible as a trustee for any gaps in the accounts. She was fully behind Dr Colman in finding the root of the expenses issue. She thought it was important. There still had not been a full explanation of the issue. She and a lot of other members had not known about the President's honorarium and how the attendance allowance had appeared out of thin air to benefit lay members.

The whole episode left a very bad taste in Alex Freeman's mouth. GWS explained he did not wish to put words into Alex Freeman's mouth but wondered whether she would agree with the following. The way in which the GMC had been operating was if you kept your head down and your nose clean you were rewarded. If you did not you were not rewarded. People tried to find ways to stop members saying things. One ex-member of the GMC had told Alex Freeman that they had been threatened that if they did not do certain things certain consequences would occur. He was a Freemason and the person who was another member who was also a Freemason had made this threat. Freemasons tended not to declare themselves. That had all been about the Bristol case. The only way it was possible to talk to other members of the GMC was via membership of committees. An awful lot of business was done informally and if you were not in the in-group you were not involved. Alex Freeman found it very worrying that the staff at the GMC knew more about its business than she did. When you had a two-day council meeting and members were presented with several inches of papers to read it was not surprising that they became swamped and did not know everything that was going on. Somebody else had told her that when they first became a screener it became apparent to them that there were a whole load of complaints in respect of practice procedures which had simply been dropped and never considered. That meant that the GMC was taking it upon itself to decide things and that the complainant became immaterial.

Very Reverend Graham Forbes CBE MA

2008-07-25T00:28:00.000-07:00

George Bernard Shaw on the GMC. When asked "Have we lost faith? ... but we have transferred it from God to the General Medical Council. ...

Reverend Forbes leaves the bible at home during Committee meetings with the dark side. God was kept out of the violations of human rights that were ignored. God was said to have an attitudinal problem and a lack of insight.

Ruth Evans MA

2008-07-25T00:26:00.000-07:00

Vintage Fashion

Finlay Scott Chief Executive. Dubbed the Witchfinder General

2008-07-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

Donald and I hid a lot of things regarding Shipman. To distract the public, we blamed the doctors and now happily punish them. No one must of course know that the reason Shipman existed was because of our incompetence. No one must know about the meeting to reverse the findings for the Bristol Doctors either. Its all about how good you keep the secrets and what you make people believe. You can make people believe anything with a lean mean publicity machine.

Finlay Scott, Chief Executive

Member, Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board
Governor, London Metropolitan University
Deputy Chair, Management Committee, International Association of Medical Regulatory Authorities
Chair, Physician Information Exchange Working Group

Finlay Scott's CV and additional document available on the Shipman Inquiry website.
Search for " Finlay Scott"

Education Open University BA Hons 2.1 Economics
Durham University Business School MsC Management Studies [ Distinction]
Open University LLB [hons] 2.1

Professor William Dunlop CBE (GMC No. 0010038)

2008-07-20T00:07:00.001-07:00

Specsavers 1973

elected by doctors in North England

Professor Sir Graeme Robertson Dawson Catto MD (GMC No. 1315662)

2008-07-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

I keep telling everyone that Finlay Scott doesn't pull my strings.

appointed by the Council of Heads of Medical Schools

Mrs Gillian Elizabeth Camm BSc

2008-07-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

Doe Eyed Look for the Camera Gillian.

appointed by the Privy Council

Professor Christopher John Kent Bulstrode MCh FRCS (GMC No. 2280420)

2008-07-19T16:06:00.001-07:00

elected by doctors in Central England

"THERE IS NO RIGHT TO REPLY. PROFESSIONALS DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT TO REPLY, BY DEFINITION. THAT IS ONE OF THE CROSSES WHICH A PROFESSIONAL MUST BEAR!"

'This website is a great idea and will put the cat among the pigeons with the medical profession, which is just what's needed. Doctors will feel threatened, and rightly, as one or two will find their trousers round their ankles.' C Bulstrode Guardian

Conflict of interest - Supports and created iwantgreatcare.org.
None declared on this list.

Anonymous Said - We Know this Man :). [20th July 2008]

In the interests of free speech, we feature a video that shall act as a unintentional comparator. Any similarities to this GMC member is purely purposeful and coincidental.

The Annoying Thing - The best home videos are here

Sir Michael Sydney Buckley MA

2008-07-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

GMC cannot afford a wig
appointed by the Privy Council

Mr Stephen Brearley FRCS (GMC No. 2383732)

2008-07-19T16:01:00.000-07:00

Clearly picked the wrong tie in the dark
(GMC No. 2383732)

Dr Edwin Miles Borman FRCA (GMC No. 3159282)

2008-07-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

Putting People to Sleep in the nicest possible way
elected by doctors in the English Midlands

Professor Dame Carol Black DBE FRCP FMedSci (GMC No. 1463864)

2008-07-19T15:36:00.001-07:00

Needs to eat cream cakes.

appointed by Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

Rt Hon Kevin John Barron PC MP

2008-07-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

Has he ever done anything useful?
appointed by the Privy Council

Dr Sathiyakeerthy Ariyanayagam JP (GMC No. 3237409)

2008-07-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

Bad choice of handkerchief
elected by doctors in Central England

Dr Rachel Jean Angus FRCP (GMC No. 2207720)

2008-07-19T15:26:00.000-07:00

Slimming World