Vote, vote, vote, for the GMC

The postman pushed two large, identical envelopes through our letterbox - cat flap actually - one for me, one for my husband. Double sets of mail are common in bimedical households. We opened them - voting papers for the General Medical Council. I flipped through mine. “Have you seen this?” I asked, “There are dozens of them standing.” My husband glanced unenthusiastically at his and put it down again.

That evening, glass of wine in hand, we both returned to them. “There are 158 people in here,” I said, “There's going to be some drastic weeding out.” We armed ourselves with pencils and red pens. Closer inspection of the pages showed several blanks - “no photo supplied.” “Well, if they can't be bothered to produce a photograph they can't be very serious,” I said. “I'm not voting for any of them.” A red line through all the “no photo” brigade caused an immediate and satisfying reduction in the number of candidates.

Across the table prejudice was rearing its ugly head in the form of agism. “This chap's past …