It is always sad to report on the plight of oppressed workers, but Monitor has seldom heard of greater hardship than that suffered by the downtrodden masses at the Royal College of Nursing. Forced out of upmarket Cavendish Square to rented accommodation in grimy Euston while the gentleman's club which houses their headquarters is refurbished, they have, confides head nurse Christine Hancock, found it 'pretty hard' to come to terms with the half-mile trek to John Lewis. 'One of the suggestions was that we lay on a lunchtime bus service,' she says. 'I just hope that sales over the road haven't been affected too much by the withdrawal of the nurse pound.'

Monitor favourite Lord Hunt of Consultancy appears in danger of becoming an oppressed mass himself - indeed, of being stripped of his title altogether. A swift perusal of the latest Lords register of interests reveals that the former consultancy king is down to his final finger in the pie - as president of the Guideposts Trust (whatever that might be). But never fear, the formidable Lord Harris of Haringey has taken on the mantle since leaving the community health councils lobby: at the last count he had 22 declarable interests, nine of them paid.

Meanwhile, there is good news from the BBC, which appears to have solved the perennial doctor shortage. It is currently searching for 'budding medics' aged between eight and 14 to take part in a new game show to be called Insides Out. 'So if you know where your funny bone is and what a radiologist does you could be in with a chance,' says the Beeb, which clearly expects more of its recruits than medical schools do of theirs. It's just a thought, but if they started training them up now, it could solve two tricky millennium problems at a stroke: providing someone to staff the wards over the bank holiday and sorting out childcare.

Finally, from the Royal Institute of Public Health and Hygiene and Society of Public Health comes a warning of the perils of printing your advance publicity too far ahead. It is a leaflet advertising Colonel Alistair Macmillan's Blackham Memorial Lecture, cringe-makingly entitled... 'Military public health: are the armed forces hitting the target?'