It’s exactly one month to the day that hms
beva set-sail from
Birmingham with me at the helm and much to David Mountford’s surprise we’re
still on the same course. However, we’ve
already had to contend with a few squally showers and a brief force 8 storm in
the shape of the Daily Mirror front-page as mentioned in my Blog a couple of
weeks ago - http://politicshome.com/uk/article/104970/daily_mirror_saturday_20th_september_2014.html.
At the end of last week we had confirmation
from the BHA Executive that after consideration of the minutes of the extraordinary
meeting of the BHA Veterinary Committee, which I mentioned in my blog 3 weeks
ago, and the preceding letter from the BHA Veterinary Committee, on which
BEVA was a signatory, “…BHA’s Executive decided
that the policy, as released on 26 June 2014, should proceed and that the
effective date of implementation will remain unchanged.” http://www.britishhorseracing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Anabolic-Steroids-Policy-June-2014.pdf
Two visits to HQ this week; Monday and
Friday – and no I wasn’t being called up in front of the head for bad behaviour. Monday was with Monty (David Mountford), Dave
Rendle (Congress Chair) and Anne Catchpole for our first face-to-face meeting
about next year’s Congress in Liverpool http://www.beva.org.uk/congress. Which seems a long way in advance but it was
back in July that I invited Dave Rendle to be Congress Chair and Lesley Young to
be his deputy. Furthermore, some of the
guardians have already been invited. One
of the many things I’m really excited about this Congress is the debates, Moral
Maze style, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Maze)
and true to form, there’s no lack of controversy with our chosen topics.
On Wednesday I posted an article on the
BEVA Soapbox on our BlogSpot about Musculoskeletal Paraprofessionals http://britishequinevet.blogspot.co.uk/2014_10_01_archive.html. Soapbox, which you may not know about, was
launched in April with Mark Bowen’s first posting. We introduced it to give members the
opportunity to express their own views in the public domain; you could say to allow
them to pontificate. If you would like
to post something please contact Lara Pocock in the office and she will assist
you. We'll draw the line at offensive or libellous pontifications but otherwise it's your soapbox and you can sound off as loudly and controversially as you wish!
What a humbling day on Friday…I attended
the EVJ Executive Board meeting at BEVA HQ in Fordham – I love that
journey! In attendance were Celia
(Marr), Alistair Barr and James Wood and also present by phone link were Tim
Mair and Debbie Archer – at least I was in good company with Monty!! Not that the others are bad company of course
but I was somewhat overawed by the amount of intellect in the room. EVJ is the most highly ranked single species journal globally and is in the top 10 of all veterinary journals; the number of scientific papers submitted
highlights this highly prestigious status. 60% of submitted papers are rejected but, whilst I thought that this sort of rate might be a deterrent to authors, it appears to reflect the desire of researchers to be published in our journal. Obviously all submitted papers are very carefully scrutinised and therefore the editors' and peer reviewers' workloads are nearly twice what they might seem to be at first sight. EVJ is clearly a a
victim of its own success.
Till next week, steady as she goes…
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