<<Half your income is not pensionable because it is reimbursement of
expenses - not income.>>

Yes and no. Most of our directly-reimbursed "expenses"  represent a
complicated way of paying us what was agreed in the 1967 charter----namely
that HMG would meet most of the costs of staff and premises.  I don't think
it is as straightforward as expenses for an employee in a private company
or plc.

<<As a company director I can pay a personal pension
only on what I am paid, not on the gross income of the company - and the
benefits are not a patch on your NHS pension.>>

Certainly is a good pension scheme--the problem is the 20 or 30 or 40 years
of torture you have to go through to get the damned thing!  We have  a
saying over here---"Live horse and you'll get grass."  
And there is a big difference between gross company income or turnover or
revenue or whatever you want to call it on the one hand, and on the other
the fees and allowances paid to the average GP. Apart from anything else,
the average company has *some* chance of increasing revenue and profit
whereas GP is marked by regression  to the mean.  

<<And as an employer I can assure you that I am completely liable for the
torts of my employees acting on my behalf, as are you.>>

I think there may be a slight difference between the sort of problems which
the average receptionist or practice nurse deals with and the sort of
problems the average receptionist in industry handles.  If  your
receptionist rarely gets the opportunity to kill, maim or seriously upset
someone then worries about vicarious liability are correspondingly less.

<<Bleat if you want - but please bleat about the bleatworthy things!>>

I think this thread started with Robert expressing his general satisfaction
about working conditions in GP, income and status relative to other public
service occupations and need to have some obvious differentiating feature
between medicine and other fields.
Not all of us are as satisfied with NHS GP---personally I think it is a
third-rate setup and I now feel it is impossible to do proper primary care
medicine under the NHS---and replies have pointed out such facts as the
near-equivalence of income in other public service areas for a lot less
work, responsibility and worry. 
Current data in N Ireland companies shows that top managers earn a fair bit
more than GPs---yet this fact is ignored time after time in debate on
relative incomes. 
I feel that it is quite unfair to accuse any of us of bleating---drawing
attention to major deficiencies in the health service on which we all rely
is quite a sensible thing to do. 

Declan


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