It seems hardly credible that we are already more than two months into 2006! The new year sees the Society in a healthy state, financially stronger and more secure than we have ever been.

We are also seeing the benefit of good business planning with all our major committees productively pushing forward the agenda of the Society. I think my immediate predecessors, Bob Stout and Cameron Swift must be pleased to see the effects of the changes they oversaw, to the Society’s structure, enabling a direct engagement of the four nations with their respective government machinery. Martin Edwards has reported that the Welsh branch are considering opening a Welsh office, in conjunction with Age Concern, and that there is regular contact between the BGS and the Welsh assembly. Scotland has always had fairly robust contact with their politicians and are at the moment negotiating in a meaningful way regarding the manpower planning of the specialty. In Northern Ireland the Society has major concerns over the loss of facilities and the fact that there is no NSF in place, a fact which disadvantages older people in Northern Ireland. I am very grateful for the invitation to attend the joint meeting of the Northern Ireland and Scotland branches of the BGS, to be held in May, when I am sure I will hear of further developments in these areas.

The English engagement with policy development has been much strengthened by Ian Philp’s initiative to start a Special Forum for Older People’s Health. We had the second meeting of this group in January. The Society is represented by the Chairman and vice-Chairman of the English Council and the President. The meeting is inter-disciplinary with other specialist societies for physiotherapy, occupational therapy, the Royal College of Nurses being represented. The forum represents inter-disciplinary working at its best and through Ian Philp, who ably chairs the meeting, we have the opportunity to directly influence policy, in a way that we have not been able to do for some time. I personally hope that this forum will grow in importance and will form the basis of an alliance of specialist societies with regard to elderly care. Such an alliance will help us further the aims of the Society. It is clear that on most issues, the BGS position seems to be aligned with the other professionals’ views. It is much more likely that we will command attention if we have a broader based opinion. We are extremely fortunate that Ian Philp is still an active member of our Society, and is very much alive to the current issues and also how they are dealt with within government. I was also very impressed that Ian has had a series on morning television, using a calculation of biological age to set people targets of health promotion. I only caught one of these programmes but I must say that Ian looked a natural (is this going to be his career after Tzardom!). I think his palpable enjoyment of ice-skating and racing go-karts in the interest of health, and the obvious benefit to the participants, all form a powerful positive message about health.

One of the main issues dealt with by the Specialist Forum on Older People, was payment by results services for older people. James Barret has characteristically produced a thorough and informed document on this, which will be available on our website. I think it is an illustration of the direct input we now have on policy through this forum.

Public Relations
Although we get little feedback about the newsletter I was amused at the comments received via David that the newsletter had too many pictures of the President and he appeared to be getting younger! I must say I wholly agree with these comments. I was even more embarrassed when a profile of me, lavishly illustrated by large-scale photographs, appeared in Hospital Doctor in January. This interview was one of the first shots in our campaign to try and increase our public relations profile and the interview was arranged for me by Lynn Trenery, who is helping the BGS on such matters. We need very badly to move to a situation where issues of elderly health are referred to experts in the Society so that we can comment on them when the news is hot. We have a long way to go before we achieve this but I hope a number of profiles, which will be appearing based on interviews with me, will heighten the profile of geriatrics and make contacts with the journalistic community which will be of benefit in the longer term. To this end, we have great hopes for David Oliver, our Deputy Hon Secretary, who is manifesting an early enthusiasm and a talent for moving geriatrics into the media’s eye. We will be watching his progress with interest! Like our Editor, I would like to congratulate David on an unusual scoop in the form of the interview with Tony Robinson.

Intellectual giant
A truly great geriatrician retires from clinical practice at the end of February. Prof Ray Tallis is an intellectual giant. He has published philosophy, poetry, novels, literary criticism as well as a prodigious medical output, including fundamentally important research on neurological rehabilitation. Prospect Magazine, listed him as one of the top 100 intellectuals. I think the only other medic listed was Lord Winston. Without doubt Ray is a leading medically qualified intellectual, probably in the world. Having him within our specialty has done us a great deal of good. No one could have attended a lecture by Ray without being deeply affected by the originality and clarity of his views, plus his brilliant use of language. I am glad to say that although Ray will be officially retired from clinical practice, I suspect this is just the start of a new career in writing and commentating, and I would give a trailer for the Autumn Meeting of the British Geriatrics Society, where we will be celebrating his career by awarding him the Founder’s Medal, our highest award, and we ourselves will be rewarded as he has agreed to give the After-Dinner talk at that meeting.

Royal College of Physicians
Dame Carol Black will be standing down as President of the Royal College of Physicians (London) later this year, and the race is now on for her successor. Sadly no geriatricians are standing. As the largest branch in medicine, we now have a large number of Fellows and I hope all of them will give careful consideration to the proposed candidates. Having looked through their statements it is quite clear to me that some of the candidates will be very much more supportive of geriatric medicine than others, and it would pay for us to use our votes wisely. Scottish colleges have always succeeded in supporting the specialty and have within their regular agenda, excellent meetings on elderly care, some of which have long standing international reputations. I am pleased to say that later this year, the London College will be following suit, on my prompting. On the 8 June we will be having a whole day meeting on Medicine for the Ageing Population. I hope that members will really make an effort to attend and support this meeting, and hope it will then become a regular event within the London College’s calendar. The aim of the meeting is to bridge the gap between basic science, gerontology and clinical practice and also to see how that fits in with the organisation of care. In formulating the programme, I realise that our specialty is not short of many excellent speakers. I put down about forty names without any effort. I decided to try and have a mixture of established and younger academics. I think the day will be hugely rewarding.

Nurturing academic medicine
I am looking forward to our Spring meeting in Gateshead. The North East is a stronghold of academic geriatrics and this owes a lot to Prof Oliver James who is by far and away the best example of somebody who has led an academic department which has allowed other talent to blossom and thrive. The North East has more chairs in our specialty than any other. The likes of Rose Anne Kenny (recently moved to the Republic of Ireland), Gary Ford, Roger Francis, Chris Gray and David Barer taking a major lead in developing sub-specialities of geriatric medicine and promoting a high calibre research. The programme in Gateshead looks extremely exciting and I understand that registration is going well. For those of you who have not registered yet, please give it serious consideration as I think it is going to be one of the most outstanding of our meetings yet.

Our future meetings are going to be affected by an edict from the Federation of Royal Colleges which is putting limits on the support the industry can give, particularly with regard to satellite meetings. Alex Mair drew up a contingency discussion document which was debated at the UKMC meeting on the 19 January and we will be publishing on our website, our future policy with regard to our relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. It is important that our dealings with the pharmaceutical industry are above reproach and conducted on a professional level and that it does not compromise our independence or the educational content of our meetings. I would like to thank Ian Taylor for his work in clarifying these issues and his active part in the debate.

I was delighted that Dr Opinda Sahota had been named Hospital Doctor of the Year. Dr Sahota’s positive development of inter-disciplinary work has been outstanding. It is great that a geriatrician should be recognised at this level.

End of an institution
The Society has been considering the status of its national council study day and it was agreed that the event would no longer be a regular feature of our calendar. However, we are concerned that this forum was an opportunity for representatives of regions to have direct input into future strategy of the Society. I am very concerned that with our present structure, regional meetings have got distanced from input into BGS policy. I am also concerned that the younger generation, both trainers and consultants, who are within their first five years, should have more impact within the Society. I think a strategic day, drawing in regional representatives of the younger generation would be very useful, and David Beaumont is now taking the lead in this regard with help from Jackie Morris and Oliver Corrado. Watch this space. Another encouragement to the younger generation is the Young Doctor’s Education Grant, which will give our junior members opportunities to present posters or deliver papers at international meetings and you will find details of this elsewhere in this newsletter and on the website.

I am just back from attending the Advanced Medicine Course at the Royal College of Physicians in London. This annual event show cases excellence in medicine and I was flattered to be asked to give a presentation on advances in Parkinson’s disease - a very difficult topic to cover in twenty minutes! I was delighted to see so many geriatricians attending this meeting. Looking at previous New Horizons in Medicine (the book of the conference) it became clear to me that there had been very few talks on geriatrics over the forty-three years that this conference had been in existence. My hope is that the Medicine for the Ageing Population will set similar standards and become an equally established event putting us more at the centre rather than the periphery of Educational Programmes.

Jeremy Playfer