Liars and Cheats, named

[Stagger]

So its a myth that at certain academic institutions the first question is 'which position do you play at rugby?'

Which code do you play?

[noel]

Reminds me of an old joke (probably that I heard on the forums).

Bob: Have you ever been to Australia
Jim: No, they are all whores or rugby league players
Bob: My wife's from Australia
Jim (answering quickly): Oh yeah, what position does she play?

[Graham Breeze]

Happened to me. I maybe should have said prop instead of hooker

Were you looking for a place in a brothel or down a pit?

[mykind]

A myth that might occasionally have had some basis in fact, from an era long before I became involved.

I believe it was the case that interviews at Peterhouse College involved a rugby ball being thrown at you and if you caught it you got a place but if you kicked it back you got a scholarship

[gej]

I believe it was the case that interviews at Peterhouse College involved a rugby ball being thrown at you and if you caught it you got a place but if you kicked it back you got a scholarship

It was Teddy Hall in the version I heard

[noel]

It was Teddy Hall in the version I heard

I heard it was Stuart Hall. And it wasn't a rugby ball.

[Wheeze]

and in medicine mythology, that was St Marys Hospital.
All tosh of course, just like CL believing you had to sing the Red Flag to get admission!

[noel]

I'm worried we might be sweeping CL's concerns under the carpet here.

CL, at what point you do feel your career as a medical doctor was thwarted by the liberal elite? Perhaps you should be lying on a chaise longue before starting to answer this one.

[Mossdog]

Think people are chosen to be trained as Doctors based on merit? No chance! If you don't demonstrate your socialist conformity you'll never get a training place. Speak up for the virtues of private medicine and your chance to become a Doctor is doomed, Einstein or not.

This is why I'm all for tax avoidance even though it's unfair on the poorer people: Less money for the state to waste. Enough said.

Thinking about my friends who qualified as doctors when we were all at university ( several of whom are now consultants in their chosen fields) and the medical students I encounter regularly as part of my own employment, one of the key qualifications for the profession is demonstrating that you have a well developed sense of compassion for your fellow humans. Added to this is perhaps also having a genuine drive to serve the common good regardless of who your patients are (colour, gender sexuality, etc.), Harold Shipman excepted!!!

Personal allegiance to any specific political mainstream views is completely irrelevant. Consider how many distinquished medics are also members of the conservative party - Sarah Wollaston, for example.

Perhaps another important personal quality is holding a genuinely positive, can-do, outlook rather than fostering sneering contempt and an irrational sense of personal persecution.

[CL]

Some of you lefties are sneering at facts that are obvious, even to a goat. Mossdog allowed Noel's sarcasm to cloud his/her judgement in regard to me in the last paragraph of post 129, implying I have some personal vendetta against Doctors because I was rejected or denied access to medical school. Jumping on Noel's mistaken bandwagon.

But in a way Mossdog and Mike-T have already implied the points I was making. The term the 'common good' - maybe Mossdog's interpretation of compassion etc - is a term synonymous with socialists I.e. lefties. In other words if you don't subscribe to that view - socialised medicine - you'll never get a place at university medical school.

Mike-T has told you he wasn't interviewed for medical school but others with equal exam results were interviewed. Why were they and he not? I'll tell you forumites: it's because universities do discriminate on the basis of upbringing,the school you went to, political beliefs and others not related to ability.

Medicine is just one of them. An example I chose