Greetings, once again, from Tyneside as we eagerly await the Spring time influx!

No, I’m not talking about applicants for the Newcastle United manager’s job, but our friends and colleagues attending the Spring Conference on the banks of the Tyne at the Sage music centre, Gateshead. The Academic and social programme is in place including the Northumbrian Ceilidh after the Society Dinner on the Friday night. I know you will all be packing your dancing shoes and it promises to be a boisterous night. It’s still not too late to sign up and I hope you will all stay on for the Saturday morning session held jointly with the North East forum on Ageing with a really excellent and varied programme. Indeed, why not stay on for the weekend and sample the legendary Newcastle night life and visit the Metro centre, Hadrian’s wall, and Northumberland castles. Go on, you know it makes sense.

Pensions Crisis
Part of the Saturday programme will include a session on work and pensions, a very topical area. In many ways I am surprised that as a Society we have not made more of the current Pensions crisis as we seem to accept that future generations are going to need to put aside more savings in order to be able to support themselves in retirement, or indeed work longer. But what about those already on low incomes – will they be in a position to put more aside? Given the links between low income and poor health status are we in danger of committing retired people of the future to adverse health outcomes without so much as a blink? I wonder how realistic it is to expect large numbers of people to continue working to 67 or 68 years of age. I am sure we have all seen people in physically demanding or stressful jobs just about hanging on to their early sixties in order to secure pension rights. My guess is we may just switch many people from standard to ill health retirement. The other issue on this topic is the suggestion in the Media that final salary pension schemes such as the NHS scheme are somehow overly generous and therefore morally as well as financially bankrupt. Most workers in the NHS have been traditionally quite poorly paid and were in my view prepared to accept this in the hope of a modest degree of security after retirement. Isn’t a pension deferred salary, not just a retirement perk?

Continuing Professional Development - points and posters
Elsewhere in this issue, Ian Taylor offers us a personal and very poetic discourse on the topic of CPD expounded in greater detail on the website. As described in the last issue, interesting changes are afoot with the maximum daily achievable CPD points from Scientific meetings limited to 6, and the sponsored [formerly satellite] symposia not attracting CPD points at all. The impact of this is uncertain. Will the symposia become unattractive to potential sponsors making the sessions hard to sell and undermining the financial stability of the conference? Are we saying the symposia have no educational value at all (which seems a little harsh), or that the attraction of a few drinks, convivial atmosphere and possibly nice food will ensure the continuing popularity of these events, even at breakfast time? No, I think it’s more a question of governance - who calls the shots in deciding the content of the sessions. Education or product promotion - sometimes it’s hard to tell.

On another tack, I wonder what readers felt about the quality of some posters at recent meetings. Little [indeed, not so little] birds have whispered in my ear something about standards being poor. Can this be true? I certainly do not wish to undermine the sterling efforts of contributors and, of course, had the BGS offered a prize for the worst poster at Conference, then I would have been a contender on a number of occasions, but as we analyse how to make CPD as effective as possible maybe we need to look again at the standards of the work presented at our scientific meetings. Ron MacWalter assures us that his Clinical Practice Effectiveness folks are on the case. In the mean time, you know where to send the angry letters.

Study Leave
I may have formed the wrong impression but I wonder if attendance at Scientific and educational meetings, and maybe standing committees, is dropping? My gut feeling is that since the new Contract was introduced and with moves towards more consultant delivered care, colleagues are finding it increasingly difficult to secure time off to attend meetings. This may well be exacerbated by financial pressures in the Trusts where Study leave budgets are limited. Do others share this feeling? The risk is that it may be hard to recruit young blood to serve on our committees and that the medical education industry may have to consolidate into fewer larger events, with smaller regional events withering on the vine.

Closure of rehab beds
In this issue of the Newsletter, we publish the results of the English Council’s survey on the closure of rehab beds. The impression is that financial pressures arising in Trusts from the implementation of Agenda for Change, the consultant contract, inflation and Payment By Results (PBR) in Foundation Trusts is driving a need for cost reduction and loss of rehabilitation facilities. Interested readers may like to refer to the NHS operating framework in England for 2006-7 which will see Tariff adjustments, increasing the Tariff for Elective procedures and reducing the tariff for Emergency admissions. Next year will be extremely difficult for many Trusts and our specialty should anticipate coming under even more scrutiny.

Tony Robinson
One of the highlights of this issue is David Oliver’s moving interview with Tony Robinson (of Baldrick fame). It is rare that this newsletter carries articles from the perspective, let alone one so poignant, of the people we serve, i.e. older people and their relatives. Perhaps this is something we need to change. Tony Robinson’s experience highlights the fact that for all we geriatricians are doing right, from where our patients and their carers stand, we have a long way to go, and a much flawed system to fight. At the same time, like our President, I would like to acknowledge David’s coup in securing this interview and if, as our President implies, David is working to propel geriatric medicine into the public limelight, atta boy, David. We’re right behind you!

Following the interview with Tony Robinson, David made his first (of many, we hope) forays into the media world when he went to a screening of one of four planned prime time documentaries on older people’s care on Channel 4. Reporting back, David said that he was the only “Suit” at the gathering and, in fact, during question time was referred to as “the Man In The Tie”. He assures us that, in his role as BGS advocate among the media lovies, he will now adopt the regulation “unstructured linen suit and espadrilles without socks, tastefully accessorised with a canvas rucksack”. We’re sure that he will look quite fetching.

Feedback
Thank you to all those colleagues who have taken the time to offer feedback on the Newsletter. One reader wrote to comment that he enjoyed reading our missive but felt we were publishing too many pictures of the President. We will endeavour to correct this. No letters requesting more pictures of the Chair of the Academic and Research committee have yet been received.

Final Word - A rare cause of Falls
Even here in the North East, which is synonymous with falls research, we have not yet identified all potential causes of falls. A patient was recently admitted on my take having fallen backwards and sustained a head injury. When I asked him the cause of this, he said he had been approached by a man who hit him in the face because he was a Mackem. [See footnote]. It turns out the patient had suffered a minor stroke just before the assault which had left him dysarthric. Dysarthria? Sunderland accent? Oh dear, I need a lie down. Haway the lads, I’ll see you at the Sage.

David Beaumont

[Footnote; Mackem: Geordie dialect word for one who hails from Sunderland; no, not like Janice O’Connell]