The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7324 p683
6 November 2004

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· New contract
· Medicines management
· Registration examination
· Levothyroxine
· Hiccups
· Prescription pricing
· IT
· Personal control
· Control of entry
· Supermarket pharmacies
· Retention fees
· The Society
· The Journal

Letters to the Editor

The Society

The end is nigh …

From Dr C. M. Minchom, MRPharmS

I read with foreboding the letters pages of the PJ of 9 October. As an overseas industrial pharmacist I receive my Journal two to four weeks after most of my fellow members. The tone of most of the letters published was bleak: pharmacy education boom and bust; health minister insults community pharmacy; technicians’ code of conduct unacceptable; save our conference club; and 14 letters from individuals bemoaning the new fee structure or its effect on Birdsgrove House donations. Many of these latter correspondents indicated that they would be resigning from the Society next year.

Unlike most of my fellow members I did vote in our Council elections hoping that the Save Our Society candidates would reverse the decline and polarisation brought about by their predecessors with the clumsy introduction of continuing professional development and the Charter debacle.

I can congratulate the new Council on reversing one of the above aspects; with the introduction of the new fee structure the membership is significantly less polarised. The vast majority of us are against having to pay more. Those who have no choice will have to pay the 25 per cent increase. Unfortunately those who have a choice and cannot see the benefit of a 220 per cent increase will leave, reducing diversity.

I hope not to have to shout: “The Society is dead. Long live the new monoculture.” There is a chance to reverse this — I urge the Council to do so.

Colin Minchom
Toronto, Canada

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