Let Them Eat Admiration

With the need to call a general election within the next thirteen months, and the increasing likelihood that blaming the wogs and disenfranchising a few million voters will not be enough to win, the Government has been driven to the extreme recourse of making soothing noises at junior doctors. Rather than echoing the previous incumbent's denunciations of the medical profession as militant deviationists and political saboteurs, the new Minister for Profitable Healthcare used words like respect and admiration and even constructive in a burble for the Murdoch Times. Those junior doctors who are fluent in English may be less impressed than she hopes by this rhetorical emollience, given that she also demonstrated an apparent lack of awareness that the word ask is a verb. A Downing Street spokesbeing reiterated that pay, being merely the substance of the dispute, is not negotiable; nevertheless, it remains as yet unclear how far the junior doctors will be pacified by hints that their applause ration may be tentatively restored.