Vocation, Greed and It's All a Socialist Plot

I received some interesting feedback on my NHS post from some staunch members of the Conservative Party with whom I periodically come into contact through my work.


Their opening salvo was that being a doctor in the UK has always been a vocation and as such doctors shouldn't be paid more because they are doing what they love to do. 


I was quite taken aback by this line of reasoning.  Were they suggesting that everyone else in the UK hates their job?  Perhaps they thought that (self)loathing one's occupation means one deserves higher pay?  That they be highly compensated for their decision to pursue careers where the hours are long and the stress is high but in sectors which they hate and in which they have no "vocational" attachment?


Yes.  That is exactly what they were saying.  If you don't like the hours and the pay associated with being a doctor then you shouldn't have chosen that profession in the first place.  They also suggested that given the high intelligence required to become a doctor they could easily be successful in law or finance and so yes, medicine is a vocational choice for them. 


Of course if all the smart kids became lawyers and bankers we would be dependent upon the less intelligent, less competent to fill the ranks of doctors and nurses.  Or perhaps they think that outside of the dim only the vocationally driven or the independently wealthy can afford to be employed in the NHS.  Who else would be happy to toil long, stressful hours in understaffed, underfunded hospitals for little pay?


Given this line of reasoning I guess one of my conclusions is that this smattering from the Conservative Party must not use the NHS so were uninterested in seriously engaging in a discussion of it.


They did tell me nod, nod, wink, wink that they know Junior Doctors and they don't really work that hard and imagine, they even might snatch the odd nap in a 15 hour day when there is a moment respite from the great unwashed. 


Unhappy to show any empathy for a group of people who would want to enjoy their work, do it enthusiastically AND still want to get paid for it they moved on to explain that the problem lies within the system. They explained to me that the reason it takes so long to become a consultant is because the current consultants don't want to have more consultants and therefor intentionally keep a cap on the number of consultants. 


As an aside they claimed the same structure obtained in the Police Force where promotion to the senior ranks is allegedly artificially restricted by the Senior Ranks to make sure that they have a cosy life. 


I guess the Conservatives don't use the police either.  I wonder how they feel about the Fire Service, the Military, the Civil Service, Public Transportation, and that great old Chestnut, the State School Sector.


But then what do you suspect from a class-ridden society built on the back of a Colonial Empire...