Sir, I recently attended a course at the Plymouth Hoe Moat House entitled 'Hot Topics in Today's Dentistry' which turned out to be some sort of damage limitation exercise on behalf of the government in which Kevin Lewis and Raj Rattan regaled us with contrapuntal lectures on what a splendid future the NHS had to offer us all.

As a practitioner without any NHS patients at all, I was a little bemused by this unexpected softening-up exercise but sat out most of it anyway. When I opened the deeper layers of the nice cardboard folder we all were given I discovered my certificate of attendance was for a course entitled 'Business Opportunities in the New NHS'. So THAT'S what I went to!

I laughed all the way back to the car.

Is it significant that such a level of skulduggery is now needed to catch the ear of the hordes of GDPs who want nothing more to do with their system?