We had an excellent Spring Meeting in Aberdeen!

Steve Hamilton and his colleagues organised a most interesting programme which varied from molecular genetics to a discussion on the differences in the health service in England and Scotland.

Added to this was a splendid social programme, finishing with a magnificent dinner complete with piper and magicians, one of whom doubled as master of ceremonies. The granite city, with its millions of daffodils, was resplendid in the spring sunshine. Some even got a little pleasure from the knowledge that snow had fallen near London. We are very grateful to all who contributed to such a successful occasion.

Location, location, location
Our Society is becoming a victim of its own success. The attendance at our Spring and Autumn Meetings is now around 500 members. Some older members will remember when the Autumn meeting could be accommodated comfortably in the lecture theatre of the Royal College of Physicians and the Spring Meeting used a university lecture theatre with student residences for accommodation. We now have difficulty in finding suitable venues for our meetings as we not only need to have a lecture room which will accommodate all the delegates, but we also must have rooms for smaller sessions, an area for the exhibition and posters, and of course catering facilities.

There are only a few sites around the country, usually in purpose built conference centres, in which it is now possible to hold our meetings. Not only is the availability of venues becoming more restrictive, they are also becoming more expensive. This is particularly the case with the Novotel in London. The UK Management Committee is considering a variety of options, including the possibility of the Autumn Meeting not being held in London, but perhaps in some other conference centre such as Harrogate. I would welcome members’ views on this.

UK Management Committee
At the Spring Meeting in Aberdeen we held an Extraordinary General Meeting at which the new articles and memorandum of association of the Society was passed with only one abstention and no votes against. This means that we now have a unitary management structure for the Society, with the UK Management Committee being the overall management body. We also have four National Councils and I am delighted to report that David Black has been elected the Chair of the England Council with James Barrett as the deputy chair. The constitutions of the four National Councils were approved by the Executive at its last meeting and all the pieces are in place for the Society’s new structure. The England Council will have a major task in establishing itself and its way of working.

The UK Officers and the BGS Office will be very willing to help. We have held Extraordinary General Meetings at both the Telford and Aberdeen meetings and they were very well attended, very much better than the Annual General Meetings which we hold at our Autumn Meeting. As an experiment we are moving the Annual General Meeting to earlier in the day in the hope that more people will attend. Clearly to have it at the end of the meeting on late Friday afternoon means that many members will already have left for home. The General Meetings are the occasions when members can express their views and, indeed, implement their wishes by their votes and it is important that members should attend and participate in the affairs of the Society.

Gerry Bennett
We are greatly saddened by the death of Gerry Bennett. Gerry was Professor of Healthcare of the Elderly at Queen Mary London. He is probably best known to most people as co-author, with Shah Ebrahim, of an excellent short text book, Healthcare in Old Age. He did distinguished work in very important but rather unfashionable areas of medicine, elder abuse and wound healing. In 1995 he spent several weeks as Visiting Professor in Queen’s University Belfast. At that time the medical school was undergoing a major change in its curriculum and Gerry became heavily involved in this and designing new study guides for the course on Ageing and Health.

He continued his interest in educational methods and has further developed the study guides so that they are now ready for publication in both paper and CD form. Gerry was part of a tradition, stretching back to some of the distinguished pioneers of Geriatric Medicine, of doctors who took an interest in areas which were outside the mainstream of medicine and yet of great importance to our patients. If Geriatric Medicine ever becomes respectable and part of the medical establishment, then either medicine will have changed for the better or our specialty will have changed for the worse. He will be sadly missed.

Trendy talk
Lastly, for those who like to keep up with the latest jargon, I have heard that breakout sessions in conferences are now known as ‘mind harvesting sessions’, and in its latest reorganisation the new slimmer Department of Health will be ‘steering not rowing’ the NHS.

Bob Stout
President