Nice little earner

The NHS has a surplus of more than £1.6 billion this year yet hospitals in the UK stand to make £3.5m in total from charging their first year junior doctors. The charge is equivalent to a 20 per cent pay cut, it has been calculated by the
BMA.

- Daily Telegraph, 8th July 2008

I sit in my newly furbished living room as I type. The house still smells of its new paint and new carpets. (Light cream - I wonder how long they will stay that way!) and I am thrilled to be here. It's 5 minutes from the hospital and it's half the price I paid for half the space in London. I love it. But if you'd told me until 3 months ago that I would not be living at the hospital I would be working at, I would be very suprised. But I've gone to the private sector.

I would have been expected to pay £485 a month for one small room in a block if I had gone for the hospital accomodation- that's more than I paid for my room in Marylebone! People in my position last year didn't have to pay a thing.

I don't think junior doctors are special. I don't think they deserve a free ride. But with people already being put off applying to medical school because it is too expensive, salaries for the first year should not be cut into to such an extent for such ridiculous charges.

And still, just across the Severn:

The Welsh Assembly Government has announced that free accommodation will continue in Wales, yet hospitals in the rest of the country will begin charging first year doctors for their rooms when they start next month.

- Daily Telegraph, 8th July 2008