“Modernising Medical Careers” is a suitably Orwellian name for a Stalinist new system for training doctors in the National Health Service.

The phrase is a perfect example of newspeak. To oppose a “modern” system is to be a conservative, if not a reactionary. Yet, like all systems of centralised planning, this one has proved inefficient, inflexible and inhumane. It is an object lesson in the dangers of the ever-growing capture of hitherto autonomous professions and institutions by the state.