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'It's an outrage,' said an eminent historian today. 'I studied for three years as an undergraduate, took a Masters - another three long years while working in a museum - then got my PhD. Took me bloody years and my student debt is through the roof. Now they're allowing medics with a GP qualification to fast-track as historians by taking a two-year post graduate qualification. Not only that, but they're paying these 'History Associates' two grades higher than me for half the work,' he said, anger brimming over.
A government spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport defended the HA route. 'HAs aren't there to replace historians, they're there to augment them. They can do the boring, repetitive work, freeing up the fully qualified historians to search for Dials of Destiny, Crystal Skulls and Lost Arks - to crack the whip, so to speak,' said the spokesman. He admitted that 'occasionally' HAs have been put on the History Consultant rota to fill gaps. In one such case a HA entered a Temple of Doom without authorisation and caused the death of several assistants by allowing large stone spheres to roll over them and failing to take suitable care with automatically fired knives from booby-trapped caves.
'It's a slippery-slope,' fumed the historian. 'Properly trained historians know how to deal with things like fighting Nazis on top of speeding locomotives, wrestling with snakes or sinking into quicksand. Museum directors are seeing this new grade as a way to replace properly trained historians with inadequately trained historian associates who happen to have a medical degree. That way they don't have to pay for first-aiders either,' he added.
Image: Photo by Mile Modic on Unsplash
'You should realise that the GPs in our ranks are seriously overworked,' said a spokes-enema for the Brutish Medical Association.
'They are swamped by a backlog of millions of pesky patients demanding attention for their aches, their pains and their early warning signs of cancer.
'As an offshoot of the British Medical Association, which treats healthcare provision with the callous bluntness that's needed, we are advising family doctors to record messages on their surgery answerphones advising patients to drink poison rather than making pains of themselves outside working hours.
'It stands to reason, really. Whatever illnesses you patients are moaning about will either have disappeared within the three months or so that it takes to see your GPs, or they will have become so acute that you will probably die from them.
'So you will be doing yourselves, your fellow taxpayers and the entire medical establishment a favour if you skip all the intermediate fuss and clock out early.
'Just listen to the sensible advice on your GP practice's answerphone and drink some poison. After all, what do you all really think you have to live for?'
Image: stablediffusionweb.com
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