My medical "Defence" was the "Medical Protection Society". They did a cr*p job of my whistleblowing case. I know this because I got myself out of the deep end, they had thrown me in. Just goes to show you don't need a lawyer to fight your way out of the pit. The Medical Protection Society is a pretentious little organisation. It is stuck somewhere in London and the north. It has advisers that really shouldn't be there. They dress well and do posh things. The problem with being posh sometimes is that you forget that you have to use your brain. The MPS forgot their brain many times during their representation of me. That was a long time ago and since then they have made representations to reviews about how much they support whistleblowers. Do they? Or do they just leave them to die and hope no one will write dastardly commentary like this. I think they hoped I would die or be eaten by some NHS manager. The fact I didn't die and I was too bitter for any manager never went down very well. Over the years, I have mocked them online. Their losses against a surgeon who was a litigant in person was quite spectacular. Sadek v MPS was a troubled case for them. They had hired Lord Pannic QC at a fairly high eye-watering rate and lost. http://court-appeal.vlex.co.uk/vid/eatrf-52571738 . Pannick refused to give me an interview as I wanted to ask him whether rumours of £1000 per hour were true. We will never know now. Again, it just goes to show you don't have to be a lawyer to beat one of the biggest wigs in town. Sadek sadly was not written about in the media. He should have been as he was one of the heroes of our time. After his case, every doctor should have resigned from the MPS. They didn't though. I think its the umbilical cord syndrome, a failure to remove ones self from the club culture. The MPS used a set of lawyers called Le Brasseur Tickle. We would dub them "Tickle in a Pickle". Thankfully, they went from one silly posh name to another, Radcliffes Le Brasseur. Radcliffes continue to represent doctors. If we can call it representation that is. They were paid handsomely by the hard earned fees scrapped off the sweat of NHS doctors. Their elite reputation was practically ruined when one of their lawyers was found lifting money out of their client's account and spending it on strippers. Here is the article http://londonist.com/2008/05/lapdance-loving_lawyer_struck_off Here is the write-up in the Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1939168/Lawyer-spent-223000-on-strippers.html One would think this firm would have noticed after about £5K had gone missing but no no no, they waited until a few hundred thousand went missing. I wonder how many whistleblowers were stripped naked and thrown out into the cold because their representation was not quite what it should be. I wonder if Mr Rob Francis QC's asked them that question? I have no idea whether Rob Francis or his firm of wigs ever accepted instructions from the MPS and their lawyers but imagine if they did? This is what Rob states on his website "Robert has undertaken clinical negligence actions on behalf of claimants (publicly, privately funded or on CFAs) and defendants, including NHS and private bodies, medical defence organisations, and insurers continuously for over 30 years" http://www.serjeantsinn.com/barristers/sir_robert_francis_qc/general Isn't that interesting in an environment where we use the word "independence" when it refers to the Freedom to Speak Up Review. Oh look here is Rob Francis QC with Stephanie Bown [ my rep on the MPS] sitting together in a Clinical Disputes forum http://www.clinical-disputes-forum.org.uk/members.asp . Isn't that sweet. Has anyone asked Steph, what she did when evidence of patient neglect came to her? I guess these questions never get asked in reviews, forums, clinical incidents, peer reviews etc. It even gets more uncomfortable when I wave the relevant internal reports that demonstrate I was right. Yet, many will say it is a long time ago. That maybe so, but the same people are probably making the same mistakes even now. Therein ends the tales of today. Its important to write about them because we really need to understand what lies behind the failure of accountability and patients deaths.