Can I just ask as well, because you mentioned there about um When you were in the ODC and
campaigning, you, you thought you might have been over aggressive.
One thing I've noticed in the last, probably 5 years since you've,
since you've been involved, the tone that comes from the BDA has changed dramatically,
I think, from what it used to be under the previous, uh,
leadership. Is that a deliberate strategic choice?
Is that just a reflection of your personality and other people's personality in the peck now,
or why is that?
No, I, I, I think if I was going off and being, you know,
a loose cannon around the, the, the TV and radio studios,
or if we were putting out social media campaigns where we've got a van driving round
Westminster with a picture of uh, A bottle of gin and uh with Rishi Sunak's face on it and a
and a pair of pliers, you know, as their dental recovery plan,
you know, I think I'd be, I'd be castigated by, by people,
but, you know, this is a, I, I, I, I, I think we've got a fantastic lobbying and comms team,
I think we have, you know, I, I. Talk to the pharmacists and our medical
colleagues and our optical colleagues, and they, they're amazed by the volume
of press and media coverage. We continue to get,
I mean, obviously there, there is an ongoing problem out there,
as I've alluded to earlier, you know, people.
The profession are making a switch uh away from a reliance on NHS dentistry,
and it it it it it's certainly coincided with our ability,
I think, to be more vocal.
And you know, I, I, I've had colleagues who have, who have decided to hand in contracts and
leave and go private and convert their practise, who've come up to me and said thanks,
because some of the campaigning work we've done.
Has certainly hit home with the uh with the, with the population out there,
and the population of his practise was saying, I'm not surprised,
I've heard what's going on. I know, I understand that things are difficult
and um I'm just surprised that, you know, you, you haven't left the NHS before now,
so. Yeah, I think, you know, AI is and social media
has given us an opportunity to, to get a lot of campaigning messages out there.
We've worked really hard with other organisations, like,
you know, I went last year and spoke to the Women's Institute.
Uh, 5000 women at their AGM at the Royal Albert Hall.
Uh, it was pretty terrifying, but, um, they, they got them on board to campaign for
restoration. We, we've got other people who,
you know, quarter of a million people signed a petition for us,
um, working alongside the mirror and 38 Degrees and other campaign.
groups, you know, I've done some work recently with Panorama on the awful situation of
baby patches and the sugary content of those, and we've worked up alliances with the oral
health, uh sorry, the Obesity Health Alliance and free school meals and various other
campaign groups. And I think, you know, I, I'm quite proud of
some of the work that, not, not me, uh, uh, you know, alone,
but, you know, other members of committees and other members of staff at the BDA have worked
really bloody hard to, to get dentistry at the forefront of uh uh of that campaigning,
really. This goes back to the point we said at the
start though about the.
All the, all the work you've just referenced, that's not,
um, just looking after dentists' interests, that's actually promoting oral health more
generally and um taking on a more, Professional association role as
opposed to just being a trade union, which there is,
I think, a difference in tone adopted if you were overly aggressive in trying to do that
thing and just talking about dentist pay the entire time,
that might be off-putting to people who have a negative effect,
but the way that the BDA has approached its media work has been far better at.
Gaining public approval for the association, isn't it?
Well, it's very kind of you and I, I will pass the congratulations back to uh the the team of
people that have have have worked really hard for that,
yeah, um.