Editorial April 2006 Only two contributions have been received for SCPNET during March. The first is a survey of Conflict Resolution by Dr L Lowenstein (recently a regular contributor, who had offered his expertise and services to try to help resolve those within the Society). The other is information received about the International Review of Psychiatry (Joint Editor Dr Dinesh Bhugra, a long-time member of SCP), with advantageous subscriptions for trainee psychiatrists. Misunderstandings within the Society, including some about access to the pages of its website, have persisted, stemming from earlier crises during which I stepped into one of the sudden gaps by request. In January 2005 (already then really too old, and now having entered my 80th year) I urged recruitment of a new editor/webmaster with all the necessary skills and enthusiasm for the new millennium. Ideally, I then suggested, "a younger psychiatrist interested in medical journalism, with advanced IT skills, time and energy - one able to attend meetings in London &/or (perhaps better) to organise phone conference links - suitable for a small group so widely dispersed geographically" - (as do barristers commonly for litigation conferences). The necessary reorganisation during 2004 led to difficulties which one member has described as characteristic of how an organisation "naturally self destructs". Attendances at meetings have predictably continued to be low and no initiative has been pursued to explore technological facilitation for the work of what is a diminished society's elderly membership, and by encouragement to embrace the internet as the universal mode of communication of the immediate future (q.v. the advance of "Silver Surfing"), with initiatives such as telephone hook-ups for meetings as proposed early last year - c.f. also: " - - Members of Parliament are to be dragged into the internet age with a proposal to introduce “virtual surgeries” with their constituents using webcams - - " The Sunday Times April 2 2006 I reaffirm once again the availability of our pages to all serious contributors, subject to a generally permissive editorial policy and without formal peer review. It is to be hoped that misinformation in the latest minutes currently circulated in draft will be amended before they reach those members who do not visit SCPNET regularly. Members might be spurred to comment on a letter in The Times about NHS pay, April 4, in which a Consultant Physician suggests that " - - Modern consultants, like their predecessors, have an inflated view of their own importance. They think they have an almost God-like right to be paid well, very well. This is because they think they have more worth to society than dustmen, cleaners and people who run corner shops. Doctors are not the only group in society that work long hours, in stressful jobs. The only right they have is respect, but respect has to be earned. If modern doctors are rarely respected, then that is their fault. - - the motivation that keeps many doctors going is not altruism or respect, but greed." We look forward to feedback about the website during my tenure of the editorship, and to many responses and original contributions during the coming months.
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