council members can now access papers online!
** major advance *** – thank John Cosgrove for raising and driving this.

topics for today that I spoke on – there is no point in repeating other peoples’ points, and we can only report what I said.

have been elected to trustee board, thankyou. Will do my best.

climate change – big support for the aims and I think the RCGP has taken this very seriously. We need to ban outdoor heaters and see more of the fab Rowena Christmas on her bike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf8qKxGN9AI

new plan for CPD – is going to be free, great, benefit to members, excellent, I don’t get the plan for a new structure to do this however but it may be that I prefer to do what I think is useful and necessary rather than follow a script.

sponsorship – I still feel that sponsorship creates avoidable conflicts that we can and should resist. Emmas dairy, Brunei, Babylon…. the members survey on this had a low response rate, sadly, though those results did express preferences for far less sponsorship and more transparency. This will now come to trustee board which will make decisions – and I will be there.

assisted dying – the RCGP has put out the press release on results of membership survey
https://www.rcgp.org.uk/about-us/news/2020/february/royal-college-of-gps-remains-opposed-to-change-in-the-law-on-assisted-dying.aspx

I am personally opposed to assisted dying https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4502 and some other reasons why are :
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-45117163 https://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a1682.full https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29506512
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29506512
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26864709

I know people have very different views and often for very sad and difficult reasons. I don’t think twitter debates are likely to help much, given the short nature of the form, and the potential for hurt and a lack of ability to hug afterwards. but am happy to chat in person.