Leaders-born or made?

I have spent the last couple of days attending a course on leadership.  I have to admit to having been rather sceptical that one could teach leadership.  Indeed one of the exercises we did was to think of people we considered great leaders.  Some of the responses were typical, some less so:  Winston Churchill, Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi, Don Bradman, Mike Brearley, Margaret Thatcher, were a few of the names we came up with.  It struck me that the one characteristic they shared was that they hadn’t ever attended a leadership course!

On the other hand I was made to think about the nuts and bolts of leadership.  I think it will help me to make the most of my (limited) gifts, and it may make me a more effective leader.  I wonder whether it will make me a “better” one.  My instinct is still that some people have it and some don’t.  The difficulty is in knowing which side of the line you are

A good doctor?

back after a long layoff:  I have decided that if I post only infrequently then I won’t get too many readers so I can be more than usually self-indulgent

For some reason I went through a period of what we used to call at medical school an ILA or “involuntary life assessment” today.  As part of this I was asking myself if I am a good doctor.  Certainly by most objective criteria (patient and colleague feedback, publications, grants etc) I do well.

On the other hand I know that I am a much better doctor at the beginning of someone’s cancer journey than I am at the end of life.  I am not alone in this, certainly.  But I and many other cancer specialists I suspect struggle with the transition from giving hope when there was little (at which I am good!), and knowing how or whether to maintain hope when there is none.  All of my patients have thought about dying, each in their own way, and many of them are happy to talk about it.  Some are not.  very few will introduce the subject. How does one know?  In reality there are a myriad of verbal and non-verbal cues.  What should I say?  Honesty of course-they deserve that.  But do people want or need to be told the bare facts-”You will die within the next few days,weeks,hours”.  At such a time what people need is a friend, not a doctor.

A famous professor at the Royal Marsden said to me words to the effect that an oncologist should be a guide on the journey, a strong ally in the fight and a friend in death.  I fear I am a very good guide, an excellent ally but perhaps a poor friend.

No amount of communication skills courses can give me that.  I hope experience will

Asleep but not dead…

In the meantime, who do you think will be the new health secretary?

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Bread for the masses

I am all for freedom of choice, but for the life of me I can’t see what’s wrong with THIS

Into the ears of babes and sucklings…

I went to a football match on Sunday. I took my 7 year old son. I haven’t been to a live footie match for several years-in fact since I became a father. There was a moving moment of solidarity with the McCann family. After that, the singing started. Here’s a sample of what the Chelsea fans were singing to their Everton visitors.  (Those of a tender disposition do not read on)

In your Liverpool slums
In your Liverpool slums
You look in the dustbin for something to eat
You find a dead rat and you think it’s a treat
In your Liverpool slums

In your Liverpool slums
In your Liverpool slums
You s**t on the carpet, you p**s in the bath
You finger your grandma, and think it’s a laugh
In your Liverpool slums…

It goes on and it doesn’t get any better. Now I know that I wasn’t in the family enclosure, although I was surrounded by children. I know that football is an emotive part of may peoples lives. I think I have a sense of humour which is not especially delicate, and I have a more or less complete mastery of Anglo-Saxon vernacular, which I use regularly. But I don’t want my children or anyone else’s growing up learning to hurl ritual abuse at people. I don’t like them thinking it’s normal to be so tribal. I want them to be able to think as individuals, not as part of a baying mob. I also don’t see how it is very different from racist abuse. Not of course that I particularly like Liverpool myself!

Maybe that’s my prudish middle class background. I certainly don’t remember having the same objections 20 years ago. But I’m not sure I will take my son back to Stamford Bridge, at least not for another 5-10 years

Which is a shame because he absolutely loves football

Its really true…

He’s really going

*Sniff*

Miss him already

(Good to see George W believes in wearing a condom, though its not a brand I recognise!  And I like the merkin, too)

Paying for the hours

Unfortunately I have realised that my inflated monolith of a salary will soon be worth no more than a few million Zimbawe dollars thanks to Gordon’s recent discovery that tax and spend policies lead to an end to Tory Boom and Bust increasing inflationary pressure. So I hopped in the Lambo with Lola and hot-footed it down to London to Damien Hirst’s gallery where I was able to pick up a rather tastefully embalmed surgeon for a fraction of the cost of the real thing. I am hoping to put it on the door of my office to discourage any of the squitty juniors from coming to ask my advice.

On the way back we were passing the DCMS when I saw David Lammy deep in thought. I bet he was worrying about THIS problem-how to save the Wardington book of hours for the nation. Thinking it was a book of my hours which my secretary (no doubt jealous of Lola) had sent to Mrs Hewitt, I nearly made him an offer on the spot, but when he explained what it really was, I decided that I didn’t like the idea of opening Sana Towers to the public, so my accountant wouldn’t let me buy it.

But why don’t British museums sell some of their works of art to finance acquisitions. There are hundreds of thousands of pictures and sculptures in this country that never see the light of day. Why not pawn a few to pay for something that the curators are actually prepared to hang. Surely we don’t need to keep them all in case some junior minister wants to hang it on the wall of his grace and favour apartment to impress the chicks.

The Imperial War Museum has got the idea. They recently sold a rare Messerchmitt 163 (German)to pay for an almost unique DeHavilland DH9 (British). This sounds like a good deal especially as it looks like they may have enough parts to make 2 of the DH9s!

Maybe some of our other museums should follow suit. I’m sure this must happen on a small scale, but we never seem to get to hear of it

They go up diddly-um up

I admit it, I was a great fan of Biggles. Not only that but I am desperately hoping my children will be as well, so that I have an excuse to get them out of storage! So I was very pleased to see THIS amazing story. I don’t remember Biggles flying the DH9, as I’m sure that he preferred the Sopwith Camel, or the occasional foray in an SE5, but I’m sure that he would have been impressed that these guys, having found the aircraft in pieces in a maharajahs elephant shed managed to reconstruct the DeHavilland DH9 bomber, a wooden aeroplane of which no other examples survive, without even the benefit of any technical drawings. I am all the more amazed because I saw pictures of the bits in a display at Duxford before they had been reconstructed and there was no wood there-only the metal parts had survived the years. It did not look like an embryo bomber, and I would have fancied my chances of matching their efforts with the contents of my shed, given enough time and effort.

Rather more worrying they apparently had enough parts left over to build another ‘plane, and this one they’re going to try to fly. I think I’ll let Algy or Bertie go up first. Not that I’m windy of course