I can’t believe those filthy Europeans are trying to limit our working hours again. No wonder my esteemed colleagues at the Royal College of Surgeons, British Orthopaedic Association and Association of Surgeons in Training are getting hot under the collar.

Interestingly, juniors in this country were firmly in favour of a 48-hour week at that time and, more interestingly, that was not specialty specific i.e. the surgeons wanted to lay about as much as everyone else.

They’ve barely had 13 years to get used to the idea. It was just yesterday, in 1996, that the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee (JDC) started warning the Department of Health (DoH) and Royal Colleges about the implications of the European Working Time Directive for doctors in training.

As usual, one half called the JDC shroud wavers, the other thought we had designed the legislation so that ‘layabout’ GPs and psychiatrists could have an easy life. I spent a large portion of my time in the BMA shuttling to Brussels to try and mitigate the impacts of the EWTD, and surveying what juniors actually thought about it (at least what they thought about it when their boss wasn’t listening).

Unfortunately, the DoH and royal colleges didn’t grasp the nettle of changing how we work and train until EWTD was upon them. Now that it is getting tough, and juniors and hospitals alike are feeling the pinch, what is their answer? Let’s see if we can opt out.

I have a prediction for them. The Government will say that we have to implement it and the EU will agree. Trying to close your eyes and hope it goes away may have worked for monsters under the bed – but this monster is under your quilt with you already, and is licking your thigh getting ready for a big bite.

Why don’t we use this opportunity to really change the way we do training in the UK? The JDC had a plan then, I have a plan now (happy to discuss with anyone interested enough to listen), or we can keep walking out on the beach wondering where the sea has gone, with the inevitable result when the law of geophysics reasserts itself.