21 AUGUST 1971, Page 4

Keith Joseph may be at present, blissfully unaware of it

but things are reaching flashpoint in our hospitals. Before the end of this week he will find a letter on his desk from the chairman of the 4,000 strong Junior Hospital Doctors' Association, Dr Katherine Bradley, protesting that there are clear indications of discrimination against some of their members who apply to become Consultants. The JHDA are certainly militant about the conditions junior hospital doctors have to work under, but one member who happened unofficially to see his papers, found himself labelled as a 'medical anarchist ' (whatever that is, but it doesn't sound very nice). The Association has the names of a number of other doctors whose applications have been turned down 'for political reasons '. lf Sir Keith is thinking of playing the affair down, he might also to know that the Association is the process"cif becoming a trade,union.

A queStion of communication

For what /seemed like weeks the streets, pubs and restaurants around. Gower Street have been populated 'bY 'a motley of nationalities talking fa tett* Unidentifiable language. It wasinI ,eventiianyl discoVered, Esperanto and] they were 'littending a Congreso at ','London thilttersity. One lunchtime la group of delegates happened to be dining next to me at a local restaurant and appeared to be having the utmost difficulty in communicating with the waitress who offered them, very fairly I thought, a choice of French, English or Spanish. Actually it was an Italian restaurant and over the spaghetti I got to thinking about the necessity for a universal language now that both Oxford and the Catholic Church have done away with Latin.

There are something like eight million Esperanto speakers in the world from Iceland to Japan. But only 1500 of them are in Britain, which looks as if we don't really take the whole thing very seriously. It's not even an examinablesubject for GCE — because being only eighty-odd years old it's got no ' culture ' behind it (whereas Swahili, apparently, has). The Esperanto Association say this is because in Britain we are convinced that English still is, and always will be, the international language. And I dare say they're right. But I'm not very struck on their proposal that Esperanto ought to be the common language of the Common Market. It would give the Scandinavians, who really do take this sort of thing seriously, a terribly unfair advantage.

Warding them of

Another thing we ought to be taking seriously, but aren't, is what the Daily Mirror all last week called the EuroDollies. Determined to apprise the electorate of all the implications of EEC the Mirror sent their trendy young columnist Christopher Ward a-wandering through the Common Market sampling the Birds. A French girl's kiss, he reports, lasts between four and twelve seconds and tastes of garlic. Italian girls' burns, he observes, are well-rounded. Belgian girls are passionate, he reveals, only with a certain amount of encouragement which I was happy to provide.' Oh really? My information is that Christopher Ward is engaged to be mailed next month to an attractive English girl called Fanny. So we can take it as official that our homegrown talent is preferable in very way? And a jolly sight more tolerant, obviously.

Friends in need

Out of professional curiosity I turned to this week's batch of Underground papers to see what they had to say about the Oz verdict — not really knowing what to expect. But least of all did I expect such an antipathetic reaction as was there to be found. Rolling Stone made no mention of it from beginning to end. International Times (which was itself found guilty of conspiring to deprave and corrupt public morals some time ago) found the whole thing 'very boring.' Frendz commented that 'There's a strong feling among people involved in OZ//nlz/Underground that we ought to use the Oz case as the beginning of a full-frontal attack on Obscenity legislation ' but then concluded that 'this is no time to be on he attack.' It does look as. if Oz's most voluble allies this time have been the Guardian and the Spectator. When you've got enemies like us, who needs friends — or Frendz?

Just my opinion

Sources not unadjacent to the Opinion Poll world tell me that anti-Market feeling in the country is once more asserting itsself, though this may not emerge in published polls for a while. Of course it's conceivable this may have something to do with the crisis on Clydeside, with the depressing unemployment figures or with the Government's holiday moratorium on propaganda. But my own highly unscientific theory is that the pollsters couldn't find so many pro-Marketers because they're all off on their European package holidays, and if their experiences are anything like those described by Nigel Buxton in this issue perhaps they'll have changed their minds by the time they get back.

Capricious

I can't say I got much comfort from the report just out in Sweden saying most makes of car have marginally improved their life-expectancy since last year. When I bought a new Capri exactly a year ago this week a number of features on it were still-born : the lock on the driver's door, which was an open invitation to car thieves, the ventilation system which refused to be turned off, and the windscreen washer which refused to go on. Since then the lights have failed three times on very dark roads, the clutch burnt out on a steep hill, an oil leak spurted oil all over the engine in the middle of London and the windscreen shattered in Gant's Hill.

Teething troubles, you may say, and charitably I might have agreed with you. Until last week. Last week I took the car to an automatic car-wash, the kind where a conveyor belt delivers you and the car into a monstrous tunnel of spurting water, gigantic fluffy rollers, and hurricanes of hot air. It is, in fact, an exciting and undemanding voyage; all the driver need to do is ensure his windows are tightly shut. That's right. The window wouldn't budge. As the car was drawn inexorably into the watery blackness, I tugged and tugged at the handle. Just as the first jets of water hit the car there was a dull thud as the entire window disengaged itself from the handles and sunk out of sight into the recesses of the bodywork.

Unlike the girl in the shampoo addwhe appears to do this sort of thing on purpose and with obvious enjoyment, I found it a most humiliating experience altogether — and one, I may say, which has deeply affected my attitude towards British workmanship rather than automatic carwashes.

MWJ