new chief medical officer required

If you missed the news that Liam Donaldson is retiring in May 2010 from the position of Chief Medical Officer then you may already be too late to apply to fill the vacancy.

As part of their program of modernising the NHS the Ministers responsible have chosen a slightly different approach to the selection process. The traditional rounds of stuffy interviews are to be dispensed with in favour of a process more in keeping with the way that the current incumbent of the position has expanded the role.

Accepted applicants will have from the 1st January until the 15th April 2010 to accumulate as many points as possible based on newspaper column inches, internet page hits and minutes of television coverage for their concocted health scares, calls for higher taxation and demands of new regulation for pleasurable products.

"We are pro-actively making this change to better reflect the responsibilities of the post," said the Minister responsible for the revised selection process, "and also to allow the candidates to prove their effectiveness in the role should they be successful. It's no good them being able to perform well in front of an interview panel if they can't convert that to generating fear in the general public through the media."

"Naturally we've weighted the scoring towards appearances in the national media however we have not ignoring the impact on a global scale" he said "so successful hysteria in, for example, the USA based on a story that was made up in Britain will be positively received by the review committee. In the unlikely event of a tie between candidates the committee will oversee the process to determine the effectiveness of each campaign."

"Candidates may use material from previous campaigns during the application process but they will only score points by taking it to new levels of ridiculousness. To illustrate: There are already a number of groups working on minimum pricing for alcohol at 50p per unit so unless the candidate campaigns for 60p or 70p per unit that would be declared null and void."

"Once the selection of the new CMO is finalised we expect that they will want to begin hectoring and nannying the public from day one which is why we have already allocated them a budget to spend on setting up as many fake charities as it takes to get the public properly fearful and demanding action. We also have a large number of otherwise unemployable people ready to fill the roles that these new organisations will create."

The Minister declined when pressed to indicate how many candidates had been accepted for the selection process other than to confirm that more than one person had indicated an interest.