The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7309 p115
24 July 2004

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· Charter ballot
· Violence in pharmacies
· Cupping
· Humour in pharmacy
· Pharmacy education
· Natural therapies
· The Journal

Letters to the Editor

The Journal

Members will draw their own conclusions

From Mr G. S. Phillips, MRPharmS

It is difficult to disagree with John Gentle’s conclusion (PJ, 17 July, p85) that you have some kind of a problem with the Save Our Society campaign. Having recognised in your Leading article (p74) that the Council has produced, as you term it, the “Members’ Charter”, you cannot resist the urge to undermine this remarkable achievement by sniping about the “long-term price the Council has had to pay in order to accommodate the SOS campaign representatives and their wishes”. It seems that you have already forgotten that the SOS was voted on to the Council with a huge mandate this year, so it is not ours but the members’ views that we are pursuing. You recognise that the revised Charter has substantially more democratic checks and balances but go on to make hints about “loss of autonomy” and dark assertions about “decisions the members may not like”. However, you give not one single shred of evidence for these. You infer that the SOS campaign should be over. No doubt if we were to concede on this point, you would conclude that the SOS group was only ever “single issue”. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

The Charter issue was only the visible 10 per cent of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s iceberg of problems. We now have to deal with the 90 per cent below the waterline. Issues that large numbers of concerned members have raised with us include: the Society’s register, the relationship between pharmacy students and the Society (such as the registration examination and the difficulty over preregistration placements), the long-term financial stability of the Society and the balance of expenditure between representation and regulation, and whether the Society has in place the right balance within its structure to support both roles. Not least in members’ concerns comes public relations.

Finally you may recall that, during the June Council meeting (although you did not report it), I proposed that we introduce a membership committee. If the PJ regards this more member-focused approach as a price not worth paying, members, I am sure, will draw their own conclusions.

Graham Phillips
Member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Council

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