After @JujuliaGrace’s kind words, I thought I’d introduce myself properly and say a few words about why the PPE procurement challenges that @EveryDoctorUK is pursuing against @MattHancock are so important to doctors.

I am a consultant anaesthetist in a major London teaching hospital (views all my own and 100% not those of my employer, nor is anything that I say here a reference to my experience at my own place of work which I love). I have been on the frontline in every wave of this pandemic

I started my working life as a barrister. It was always lawyer/doctor at school and I was lucky enough to have a week of work experience at 15 with @PScotlandCSG which had me hooked on the Bar. Now a Baroness, Patricia Scotland QC was appointed Attorney General by @Gordon_Brown

There was much about being barrister that I loved but something was always missing for me. Maybe I chose the wrong law to practise. My academic interests (quite technical, often commercial stuff) didn’t really feel massively useful as a contribution to society and its betterment

None of this is intended as a criticism of any lawyers practising in those fields. It just didn’t quite work for me. I toyed with the idea of politics, did some parliamentary law, looked at lobbying but, ultimately, couldn’t resist the pull of medicine.

I have loved every single moment of my medical career, particularly as an anaesthetist (which is the most brilliant of medical specialities). I am lucky enough to have managed to combine both professions. I have established a practice as a medicolegal expert witness.

I had started training to be an assistant coroner when @EveryDoctorUK and @JuliaiaGrace appeared on my radar. I started as an @EveryDoctorUK member, then was asked to join the advisory team, then came on board as Head of Legal to give our brilliant doctor members advice.

As the pandemic unfolded and the impact it was having on all NHS workers and the patients we all care about so much became clearer, I was invited by @EveryDoctorUK to increase my time commitment and I pretty much bit their hand off!

Which is why, after a hiatus of 25 years, I found myself in the High Court of Justice yesterday morning. Last time I was counsel - bewigged and wearing the gown that still hangs in my wardrobe after all these years (Grandma and Grandad bought it for me). Yesterday I was a client

Wearing my taxpayer hat re PPE contracts, the corruption matters, the sleaze matters, the opportunistic financial self aggrandisement matters. It absolutely disgusts me. But I’m not naive enough to think that this is the only government that has ever engaged in such activities.

Power corrupts and money talks. ’Twas always thus sadly. But I and my fellow @EveryDoctorUK members wear another hat. That is the hat of a doctor, a healthcare worker, a proud part of the NHS fabric as it was originally conceived. As doctors we care most about our patients.

That’s YOU and your loved ones. We really care. Being a doctor is a vocation. There are many easier jobs. There are plenty that are more lucrative (I left one such). But most of us do it because we believe in a social contract that requires the sick and vulnerable to be helped.

And we want to be the ones to provide that help. No-one goes into medicine to make money, there are far easier ways of doing that for someone with the intellect, work ethic and skills required to qualify as a doctor.

The right wing press likes to demonise and peddle nonsense about GPs routinely earning high six figure salaries and spending their time on the golf course but such offensive claptrap is not borne out by data (or reality to be honest). Medicine is not the road to riches.

Interestingly, providing Personal Protective Equipment (“PPE”) to this government has been a road to riches for many, plenty of whom seem to have had links to ministers or have made significant donations to the current party of government and its constituent ministers and members

Which is why I spent yesterday in court. In essence, the judge ordered that @MattHancock must, to use a @BorisJohnson bingo phrase, “level with” @EveryDoctorUK and @GoodLawProject and provide unredacted versions of documents that he has previously taken a black marker pen to.

Only that way can we see the names of those involved from the government, from business and, in the (probably not isolated) case of Andrew Mills (associate and colleague of @trussliz MP) join any of the dots that may be lurking there.

Full disclosure, we didn’t win on everything yesterday which means that there will likely be further specific disclosure applications to the court next week. The full trial is set to be heard on 18th, 19th, 20th, 24th and 25th May.

I’ll be attending the whole thing and will keep you all updated as the (inevitable) drama unfolds.