From Mr D. L. Coleman, FRPharmS
SIR,-The letter from Bryan Veitch (PJ, August 19, p264) came as a welcome breath of fresh air at a time when our profession is being side-tracked from making its views known by constant and very public infighting.
Like Bryan Veitch, I hope people will take a step back, though a letter in last week's Chemist & Druggist from Mr Dajani does not inspire me with confidence that it will happen.
The Council is elected by members to represent the profession and to promote pharmacy. Members of the Council elect their officers each year. If over half the members of the Council did not have confidence in their officers they would not have re-elected them; thus, when a member talks of "a clique of senior members" in disparaging terms he is in fact referring to people elected by a majority of his colleagues who would not themselves appear to support his position.
As a pharmacist, I would be more impressed to see the Council actively pursuing issues ranging from why we still have no chief pharmacist, to investigating whether the ever-increasing demand to dispense more prescriptions in the same time is counter productive in terms of patient care, rather than debating so many inward looking issues.
Discussions on transparency (which at times seem to border on voyeurism), and creating (or abolishing) special interest groups and working parties on ways of working, are all very well if you have nothing better to do, but are they really what we elected the Council for?
David Coleman
North Walsham, Norfolk