Random churning out of thoughts:
Yes, partnerships decide how many partners to take on, thereby dividing the 'pie' of the practices income in however many larger or smaller slices. However, there are statistics of what dr:patient ratio practices have, so you can see where a practice sits compared to others.
Having said that, a practice population consisting of more young, healthy, more affluent people will require less dr/nurse/insert HCP of choice than, say, a practice serving a deprived, older population.
And yes, doctors, like plumbers and lawyers and wedding planers can be greedy. I for one do NOT want to be put on any kind of pedestal because I fear I may well quite easily fall off.
You should expect the same level of professionalism, care, diligence etc etc from your dr as you'd expect from your... oh, I don't know, architect. If they get it wrong, rooves fall down. Rubbish comparism, I hope you get my drift.
Those of you who had good experiences of other countries' health care systems: I assume you were insured. I suppose it does come down to how we as a society chose to look after those most vulnerable. The NHS' philosophy is very much founded on a Public Health idea: the best possible health care for the largest number of people financed by a finite pot.
I have lived and worked in Germany and the US (I did not work as a dr there) and of course there are things that can be better there. But the costs, both human and financial are high.
Re complaints: there are robust systems in place to complain to your GP. You cannot be removed from a dr's list for complainig - who comes up with this stuff?
Much as no dr likes complaints, they are a necessary tool to improve things. Please do give feed-back; positive we love, particularly if it comes with chocolates attached 
, negative will be looked into and issues addressed if need be. Are you aware that we do regular 'Significant Event Analysis' where near-misses, mistakes, system-failures are analysed and measures taken that the same problem should not arise again? Guess what, lots of meetings go into that, on top of management meetings (we are employers to our staff), palliative care meetings, educational meetings etc etc. Any other questions about long days??
What also stikes me in rereading (some) of this thread, is that the upsetting stories about 'it took 2 years to diagnose my DH/DC/DF' are not countered by all the many others that go something like this 'I was sure it was cancer, waiting for all my tests was horrible, my GP thought it was nothing, and in the end it did turn out to be nothing'.
Medicine is difficult, not the factual stuff, but because illnesses don't necessarily present as they 'should' according to a textbook. Being able to live with uncertainty is an important attribute of any dr. I am sure we can all think of cases were we thought 'This is cancer', all test are normal, the person gets worse, and guess what: a few months later the nasty gets found.
Re Shipman: he was a psychopath. And thank to him ALL drs have to spend a lot of time (their time as it will, rightly, not be taken away from patient-time) every fecking year proving that they are not bumping off patients by the hundreds. FFS. Btw, in Shipman's case, various drs from other practices had flagged up suspicious goings-on and were repeatedly ignored by the authorities. IMO, Shipman has been used as an excuse to further undermine and weaken General Practice.
Tianc, thank you for your concern for me: I did not make the NHS, I am not likely to personally break it, and I have a thick hide .