Fair enough - I read your original post as drug cos were paying for the drugs and prostitutes too. I stand corrected if you weren't saying that.

And I'm absolutely not saying that doctors don't go for it out of hours; drinking to excess is endemic, and yes, there's no shortage of drugs circulating either.

All I can say is that I have discussed this issue with a lot of people who I know well enough to trust their response, and to a man every one of them has maintained that there is no system of backhanders in place. I am not a fan of the drug companies for many reasons, but I do think that regarding this the accusations are baseless.

That's promotional. Do you think that a doctor is going to start giving patients drugs they don't need because he might be able to get his hands on a few free pens? Seriously?

If it's not clear, I was taking issue with the entirety of the statement I quoted.

I have talked about this precise issue with a fair few people on both side of the equation, reps and medics, and not a single one has ever been offered/offered money or inducements in kind to up their prescription rates or favour specific drugs.

"He said they were paid. That is completely unbelievable because it is illegal and can be traced. Your suggestion of coke and hookers on the other hand is much more believable, and since the parent poster didn't mention that idea, where did it come from?"

From the second half the same sentence as the allegations of payment:

"the drug companies feel they should compensate the doctors for their time, usually cash in hand with jaw dropping amounts and somehow the after parties end up in hotels with coke and hookers"

Seriously - there's what, about quarter of a million doctors in the UK; the idea that not one of them has bothered to blow the whistle on what would be scandal of epic proportions is daft. Many doctors go into that profession as a genuine vocation; there is no way on earth a conspiracy to drug up patients against their interests could be kept a secret.

Do drug companies try and keep their products at the forefront of doctors minds? Yes, they hand out free pads, pens and other tat designed to do just that. But anyone who seriously thinks a doctor is going to think "woah, if I prescribe a bit more of this I might get *two* pads of notepaper next time" is mental.

"Friend of mine is Doctor working for the UK National Heath Service and he's told me about how they can be offered cash incentives for prescribing certain drugs, particularly antidepressants."

I'm sorry, but having worked quite extensively for the NHS in the past, a family almost entirely consistening of medics (2 aunts, 2 uncles, my father, my sister) and plenty friends who are medics *and* drug reps, I can tell you that is complete and utter twaddle.

The idea that doctors are routinely getting off their heads on "coke and hookers" at the drug company's expense has zero grounding in reality.

Except you *can* be arrested and imprisoned for failure to comply with a court telling you to abide by your contract.

"My responsibilities and duties as an IT worker end the moment I quit or someone fires me"

This is repeated every time the Childs case comes up, and it's wrong. An employment contract does not just cover day of first employment to day of last employment; there can be (and very frequently are) contractual duties that go beyond that. You'd still expect to be paid your final paycheck come the payday after leaving, presumably. And a company can hold you to non-compete or non-solicitation clauses. They can also require you to return company property, be that requirement explicitly in your contact or not.

That's far too simplistic. Contracts of employment aren't just active from the first->last day of employment. There are plenty of responsibilities and contractually enforceable duties that survive the end of a job. NDAs would be an obvious one. Non-compete or solicitation clauses would be two more.

I suspect you'd take a different view if your previous employer withheld your final pay cheque saying that all obligations between you had ceased the moment you walked out the door.

You'd be surprised; IME very few young people use fountain pens any more. I went back to university to do a post-grad a couple of years ago; the on-campus shop didn't even stock ink or cartridges, much to my surprise. All they had were biros.

After noticing that, I made a point of looking what other students used to write with - without exception the only people who used fountain pens were fellow mature (30+) students.

I am horrified by the number of people who use its/it's, their/there etc interchangeably. I'm a lawyer, and such mispellings are common even in trainee solicitors these days. How on earth do you make it through 13 years of school, 3 years of undergraduate and 2 years of post-graduate education and still not know these basic rules?

It looks bad enough on a greengrocer's sign, but when these errors are in a letter from someone you're paying £109/hr it looks bloody awful IMO.

I'm not fanatical about it in general, but when words are your tool you should really have a grasp of the elementary rules governing them.

Yeah, I know it's /., where picking on MS is par for the course....but still, tech advertising generally is absolutely godawful. It doesn't seem to matter who the company is - MS, Apple, Cisco, Dell, Intel etc etc - their adverts fill me with a rage out of all proportion to that which a 20second TV spot should be capable of.

They're all suffused with a sense of bewildering smugness. The voiceovers always sound as though you're being faintly sneered at. And why do almost all of them have the same sort of whimsical music? Baffling.

Not sure about this. We've depleted a lot of the resources that we used to power our technological leaps; and most certainly the ones that are easily accessible. Without those, it'd be a lot harder to rebuild.

I'm sorry, but this is simply not true. Read your employment contract - if it doesn't say something along the lines of you having to return stuff to the employer after you leave employment I'd be amazed. There's plenty of continuing responsibilities that outlast an employment contract.

Case in point - when you leave a job, you'll probably want i) your final pay cheque, ii) any holiday pay accrued, iii) any bonuses you're entitled to and so on. Are you seriously arguing that there's no legal imperative on your former employer to provide those things? Or that an NDA suddenly ceases to exist? Or that an agreement not to badmouth the company (commonly inserted into compromise agreements) is worthless? Or an agreement to provide a specified reference?

The idea that any legal relationship or responsibilities between the parties cease the moment the employment does is quite simply a nonsense.

What you can *negotiate* in light of an unfair/constructive dismissal is irrelevant to what you're legally entitled to. The idea that you're legally empowered to keep the car/laptop certainly has no basis in English law, and I'd be amazed if it does have one in the US either.

And when did we start specifically talking about wrongful dismissals?

You have no obligations to your former employer from the moment you're fired? Really? So if I have a company car and laptop, and get fired I can then turn around and say "ha, I get to keep the car and laptop!"? I think not.

Your construction of what "stealing things" entails is woefully narrow. It doesn't just mean removal of physical items, but enjoyment/use thereof. If I steal & change your PIN, you still have your card and bank account. But they're not much use to you, are they? But as far as you're concerned, you've no legal comeback on that because it's all still there.