Are You a Professional?

[bobb]

Last time I had a "chat" with my bank manager, he spent ages figuring out whether I was "professional" or "semi-professional". I found this most odd. How can you be only half professional?

I am aware of the various social connotations of the word, but surely if you go to work and get paid for it, you are professional?!

[Regulator]

Laughably, anyone who has just 1 year's experience of working in IT can become AMBCS (Associate Member of the British Computing Society) which is listed as one of the qualifications that allows you to countersign passport applications.

Indeed.  The full list of approved counter-signatories can be found here.

Interestingly, registered medical practitioners have now been omitted from the list - but nurses are acceptable.  Also, they'll allow a journalist  - not what I'd call an upstanding member of the community.

[hellymedic]

Laughably, anyone who has just 1 year's experience of working in IT can become AMBCS (Associate Member of the British Computing Society) which is listed as one of the qualifications that allows you to countersign passport applications.

Indeed.  The full list of approved counter-signatories can be found here.

Interestingly, registered medical practitioners have now been omitted from the list - but nurses are acceptable.  Also, they'll allow a journalist  - not what I'd call an upstanding member of the community.

Given that dentists and opticians are acceptable, do you think the omission of registered medical practitioners is an oversight, rather than deliberate? I would consider being a medical practitioner would be 'equivalent'.
I would say that, wouldn't I?

[Cudzoziemiec]

I used to be a teacher, for which I had to have a qualification, albeit a pretty easily obtained one. So I suppose that made me a professional. I still have the qualification, but I no longer use it. So I'd say that makes me an ex-professional.

[Frenchie]

"A professional is a worker required to possess a large body of knowledge derived from extensive academic study (usually tertiary), with the training almost always formalized." courtesy of wikipedia

whereas

"A profession is an occupation, vocation or career where specialized knowledge of a subject, field, or science is applied."
 

Well I am a professional in a, or several, professions.

[IanDG]

Yes, Biomedical Scientist

Does it matter?

I have extensive experience of working with healthcare and engineering professionals, and it matters to them - a lot.

The only way I have been able to get any respect for the workload of my non-clinical staff has been to explain that management is a profession in itself...

yes, clinicians can be an ' up there own arses' bunch at times with attitudes towards non-clinical colleagues, as hear. from the moans and frustrations of a wife in HR. Every employee within a hospital has some part to play in making the thing run efficiently

[Jon P]

Not for almost two years, since the Evil Squirrels decided it would enhance Shareholder Value by having the Nuts Mined by one hundred and seven Honest Hindoo Coolies rather than seven BRITONS.

  Oh this is too much - pass the Alka Seltzer please!

I have been so unsuccessful in the career I'm professionally-qualified in that I've probably earned less overall than the teacher who advised me to study with him at college ("You can earn your living from it, if you come and do a course") has earned from teaching me.  Yet I have been eminently successful in a new career, with comparable or better earnings, which I retrained for in a year and have only the most basic formal qualifications for.  Go figure.

[Woofage]

I still pay my dues to whatever they call themselves these days to retain my Chartered Engineer status but I can't say I have done anything worthy of that grade for some years, especially not since being made redundant last year .

[spesh]

I've just been watching The Professionals... 

I still pay my dues to whatever they call themselves these days to retain my Chartered Engineer status but I can't say I have done anything worthy of that grade for some years, especially not since being made redundant last year .

Same here, though it's only basic membership of the I.E.T. in my case. 

[Mrs Pingu]

Ach, who cares!

I absolutely refuse to sell my soul to the devil and pay vast quantities of money to the Royal Society of Chemistry to become chartered - it's effectively a piece of paper and anyone who thinks that making positions only open to chartered chemists is going to get them someone who can do their job properly better than a non-chartered chemist is having a larf.  (Well maybe in academia, but not in the Real World ^TM). But of course that is just one particular institution.

Classless society anyone? 

[Bluebottle]

Ach, who cares!

I absolutely refuse to sell my soul to the devil and pay vast quantities of money to the Royal Society of Chemistry to become chartered - it's effectively a piece of paper and anyone who thinks that making positions only open to chartered chemists is going to get them someone who can do their job properly better than a non-chartered chemist is having a larf.  (Well maybe in academia, but not in the Real World ^TM). But of course that is just one particular institution.

Classless society anyone? 

In fairness to the RSC (not something I thought I would be saying) the CChem I did wasn't that expensive although I do admit that the standard £25 admin (or whatever it was) could have been better spent elsewhere (LBS, for example).

Furthermore, I think I have only seen one job in the last two years (and I was looking at quite a few) that listed chartered status as being a "desirable" attribute of the candidate.  No prizes for guessing that was for a job in Whitehall

On this occasion I am glad I am a chemist in that it is not necessary to have a professional membership, unlike others who are forced to stump up hundreds per year to their professional body just so they can keep their job and their professional body can keep nice offices in Belgravia or Birdcage Walk.  Although the RSC are not doing too badly on that count either 

[border-rider]

Laughably, anyone who has just 1 year's experience of working in IT can become AMBCS (Associate Member of the British Computing Society) which is listed as one of the qualifications that allows you to countersign passport applications.

Indeed.  The full list of approved counter-signatories can be found here.

Interestingly, registered medical practitioners have now been omitted from the list - but nurses are acceptable.  Also, they'll allow a journalist  - not what I'd call an upstanding member of the community.

Aye, but it says

"signed by one of the people below, or someone of similar standing in the community"

So you could argue that because it says chemist (I suspect they mean pharmacist ) a physicist could do it.

Anyways, I can still do it as "director of a VAT-registered company".  I note that my status as a parish councillor (even chairman) doesn't cut the mustard.  Got to be a local one.  Oh yeah, and also I can do it as "President/Secretary of a recognised organisation"  I expect.

[Bluebottle]

So you could argue that because it says chemist (I suspect they mean pharmacist )

I think they actually mean "pill counter" 

[alchemy]

Laughably, anyone who has just 1 year's experience of working in IT can become AMBCS (Associate Member of the British Computing Society) which is listed as one of the qualifications that allows you to countersign passport applications.

Indeed.  The full list of approved counter-signatories can be found here.

Interestingly, registered medical practitioners have now been omitted from the list - but nurses are acceptable.  Also, they'll allow a journalist  - not what I'd call an upstanding member of the community.

Aye, but it says

"signed by one of the people below, or someone of similar standing in the community"

So you could argue that because it says chemist (I suspect they mean pharmacist ) a physicist could do it.

Anyways, I can still do it as "director of a VAT-registered company".  I note that my status as a parish councillor (even chairman) doesn't cut the mustard.  Got to be a local one.  Oh yeah, and also I can do it as "President/Secretary of a recognised organisation"  I expect.

I find it annoying that governments think only certain people are capable/worthy/eligible of signing things like passport applications. They're only verifying that someone has signed a document in front of them.

Why do they think the great unwashed are incapable of doing the same thing 

I can understand the requirement for things like stat decs or similar documents, but just for witnessing a signature 

[vince]

I guess because they have something extra to lose by being careless when countersigning the document. Or at least, that is the theory.

[Fi]

Some years ago I had a run in with the passport office who refused to accept the signature of a friend as she wasn't professionally qualified. I asked them for the act and section number, or statutory instrument details which enabled them to refuse her signature.  It turned out there was no statutory basis and had to accept it.  The woman at the other end of the 'phone said they like a professional's signature as, Vince says, they've got more to lose if it all goes pear shaped.  I don't know if the law has changed since then.

[Really Ancien]

Purely out of curiosity, is it legal to live in the UK without ever bothering the state at all? What is the minimum of documentation required. I assume a birth certificate and they'll probably want you to go to school. We all give up part of our freedom in exchange for advantages conveyed by fitting into ready made templates, what are the limits on pure freedom?

Damon.

[TimO]

Purely out of curiosity, is it legal to live in the UK without ever bothering the state at all? What is the minimum of documentation required. I assume a birth certificate and they'll probably want you to go to school. We all give up part of our freedom in exchange for advantages conveyed by fitting into ready made templates, what are the limits on pure freedom?

That's probably about the minimum, and you don't actually need the birth certificate, as such.  One will be generated when you're born, but you don't have to have a copy yourself.  Likewise you'll have a National Insurance number, but unless you want to register with a GP, claim unemployment benefit, or something similar, you don't need that either.  A driving license is useful as a proof of ID, but again, unless you need to drive a car (or other motor vehicle) you don't need one.

Once you've left school, so long as you don't want to use the NHS, travel overseas, drive a motor vehicle, claim benefits from the state, or any number of other things, you don't really need any bureaucratic documents.  Of course realistically, most people do need these things from time to time.

[Butterfly]

I assume a birth certificate and they'll probably want you to go to school.

Damon.

You don't have to go to school. You have to be taught.  Your parents or anyone else can teach you at home.

[Cudzoziemiec]

When my son was born, I did wonder what the consequences would have been if I had not registered his birth. Of immediate relevance, I don't suppose he could have got a Polish, let alone British, passport, so we wouldn't be in India right now. Also I seem to remember they needed some proof of his being covered by state medical insurance when we had to take him to hospital, which could have had had consequences so serious I don't want to think it let alone type it.

I don't think any kind of certificate is needed to send a child to school though.

[drossall]

Surely you also have a liability to pay tax, which would also require documentation. You can't opt out of society because you're still using its roads for example (unless you never go anywhere) and any number of other services.

[Really Ancien]

There are plenty of people who have no appropriate documentation but I just wonder what the irreducible minimum is, if you earn below tax and N.I thresholds, which still keeps you technically legal.

Damon.

[mattc]

Once you've left school, so long as you don't want to use the NHS, travel overseas, drive a motor vehicle, claim benefits from the state, or any number of other things, you don't really need any bureaucratic documents.  Of course realistically, most people do need these things from time to time.

Interesting point about the NHS. I'd like to think that if I wandered into A&E with an injury/sickness but no NI number or other docs, they would treat me.
(But yes, registering with a GP would be a problem). So i think that overcomes the major barrier to a "below the radar" existence.

Traveling overseas is an interesting issue: seems like a basic human right to roam the planet. But then again does any country have an obligation to take you in?

[blackpuddinonnabike]

Solicitor (but I'm not very professional about it...)