Today's schmuck of the day club inductee is medical student Alex Thomas, who whines
The constant analysis of GPs' salaries is really starting to irritate me. If the public think it is such an easy ride being a GP, why aren't there more of them applying for the job themselves?
[...]
in addition to A grades in chemistry and biology, applicants may have to be able to discuss Proust or be almost fluent in Spanish or be able to quote extensively from Chaucer, in the original Middle English.
Does this sound easy so far?
Erm, do you sound like a twat so far, Mr Proust Discusser?
So irksome did I find Mr Thomas that I: a) launched the Schmuck of the day club; B) started blogging again; and C) overcame my usual lethargy and wrote a letter to the (Guardian) editor. Well done, Alex - just the cure! Here's that letter:
Let’s hope that medical student Alex Thomas ( Fancy becoming another one of those overpaid GPs?, 17 August) is better at reading patients’ symptoms than he is at plain old reading. In complaining that the public believes that GPs are overpaid and that their job is easy, he is erecting a straw man: the vast majority of the public don’t think being a GP is easy. We do, however, think they are getting a jammy deal. Just because a job is hard and demands great commitment doesn’t mean it should command a six-figure salary, particularly when nurses, whose job is at least as hard as a GPs, are so poorly remunerated.
