It weren’t ‘arf ‘ot mum

Although I am writing this in steaming heat which is more redolent of Borneo than Bournemouth, I have little doubt that by the time you read it we will be back to normal summer service: light drizzle with gales forecast.

I’m not keen on excessive heat. Indeed, following the (then) two hottest summers on record (1975 and 1976) I took the extreme step of installing air conditioning in my practice. The predictable result was that we didn’t have a decent summer in 10 years...

Things were hotting up recently at the Westminster Health Forum too. A variety of speakers from both within and without the profession gave their views on the future of dentistry, and the same – well, largely the same – group of observers as in previous years was there to glean what they could from the prognostications.

The Office of Fair Trading representative demonstrated his “without the profession” experience when he suggested that it was “inevitable” that the Government would have to address the open-ended NHS contracts under which the majority of dental practitioner providers currently work. Pointing out that such an arrangement was unique, he declined to give a precise opinion on the length of said fixed term contracts, but seven to 10 years was mentioned somewhere.