the eclipse of physiotherapy?

I keep hearing accounts from all round the UK that physiotherapy services are under increasing pressure not from weight of patient numbers (although that always remains a challenge) but from threats to the autonomy of physiotherapists employed in public health services. It feels like we might be witnessing the beginning of the end for physiotherapy as we know it. It's easy to forget that up to 18 months ago physiotherapy was an expanding profession branching out into new clinical areas and increasing in numbers. 6 or 7 years ago there was the emergence of the consultant physiohterapist role which came after at least 10 years of innovation in developing new physiotherapy roles. We now might be seeing a return to the situation which existed in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Pressure is on to gain control of physiotherapy budgets thereby removing professional autonomy and returning things to how they were in the more distant past with everything in hospitals coming under the control of all-powerful doctors and nurses. It seems highly unlikely that the situation in primary care will be better and it could be even worse within practice based commissioning. In an attenpt to maximise partners' profits there might be attempts to cut back on NHS physiotherapy by encouraging patients to go to the private sector. The fiasco of NHS dentistry could be a taste of what is to come with services like physiotherapy and other allied health professions which address quality of life rather than save lives. The thing I cannot understand is why Frontline, the mouthpiece of the CSP, remains so upbeat in what appears the greatest crisis facing the profession at any time in its history. Instead of printing fighting talk it sems to be pretending that everything is OK, that everyone is very happy and that all's well with the profession.