Over the Summer many of us have had the chance to go away for a few days, others like us old guys without school age children may choose to take an “out of season” break but for all of us September always has a new term feel.

It is a time we look forward and so we should for the BNMS. The office staff are now working hard to set up the new web site. The old one just no longer works and does not enable us to offer the kind of services we should to our members. We hope that within 8 weeks we will be up and running and you will all benefit from the better and faster website. We will hopefully add more functions to the web site over the next few months.

We hope this will attract more new members to the BNMS especially from departments with little or no contact. To help with this we no longer will require two members to sponsor each application, the officers will be responsible for due diligence but if you work with radionuclides either clinically or in research we will want you to be part of our club. Thinking about it I think we will be happy if you work in nuclear medicine with animals as well. We all face the same kind of issues. Applying will therefore be made much easier through the new web site.

Who remembers 2005? The UN was very excited to call 2005 the year of microcredit! Big events were the death of Pope John Paul II and George Best, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Angela Merkel become chancellor of Germany. Tony Blair was Prime Minister and we had no financial crisis. It was also the last year the BNMS increased its subscription fees. Since then most of the NHS had a long pay freeze but we as members of the society do need to act in a responsible way to ensure the society survives. Therefore Council has agreed that for 2019 there will be approximately a 5% increase in the subscription fees which will be £7 a year for Full Members. Then for a 3 year trial period we will have annual raises linked to the average “Agenda for change” pay increment still less than inflation but this will help us cover our costs including ensuring we pay our office staff appropriately.

Now looking forward to more interesting and exciting events; remember it is time for your early bird registration to our autumn meeting with the Irish Nuclear Medicine Association on Monday 19^th November. This means you can have a great weekend in Dublin then have a great Monday of nuclear medicine. Wow, the perfect short break. Details on our web site.  Also we are about to announce a call for nominations for the President Elect. Any senior member of the BNMS from any of our craft groups can be nominated so get your thinking caps on and think who you would like to lead the BNMS after 2020.

In the meanwhile you can look at what I am doing on twitter @PresBNMS.  You only need to join twitter if you want to comment on my tweets.

Dr John Buscombe

BNMS President