A message from Dan Hardie, who really doesn’t deserve this:

I am not a Doctor, of Medicine or anything else. Nor have I ever claimed to be a Doctor. I have indeed completed a medical training course of two weeks’ duration. I do, in fact, research a particular commodities industry, and the journalist who just called me a Doctor in the pages of a national newspaper knows this because we first met when I brought his attention to a story about the price of building materials and the cost of the London Olympics. If he’d forgotten that, he needed to simply check with me as to my profession, or to the extent of my medical training, and he didn’t.

This is simply so that we don’t get Press Officers saying that I’m some nutter who has awarded himself a medical degree. No I’m not, and no I haven’t. I also note that I am entirely in agreement with Ministry of Defence policy, that serving soldiers should not speak to the Press without permission, and should not make political statements under any circumstances. Reservists- who include a number of MPs- may do both so long as they do so as citizens, without identifying themselves as soldiers or doing so whilst they are in uniform, or revealing sensitive or classified military information.