DR MAX: this Insatiable Demand For Higher Doctors' Pay Looks Tawdry > 자유게시판

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Junior physicians are threatening to strike again. So what, you might state? When are they not threatening a walk-out? In the past two years, they have taken industrial action 11 times.

This makes me really angry. My medical union, the British Medical Association (BMA), is wasting public regard for doctors, mangling facts and pursuing Left-wing crusades with no regard for the expense to the health service.

Their insatiable demands for greater pay make my occupation, my long-lasting vocation, look tawdry, cynical and money-grubbing. There are moments when I practically feel I could rip up my membership card in aggravation.

But it isn't just my union that is acting so disgracefully. The genuine perpetrator is the Labour government, whose ineptitude in union settlements because concerning power has triggered a greedy free-for-all.

Unless these outrageous demands can be brought under control, I fear the NHS could be bankrupted.

The flashpoint this month is the BMA's need for a pay boost better than the 4 per cent that was carried out on April 1 - a rise the union has dismissed as 'derisory'.

That 4 per cent is currently above the rate of inflation, which is currently performing at 3.5 per cent. In reality, the deal provided to junior physicians (or 'resident medical professionals', as we're now supposed to call them) supplies substantially more, as they will get an additional ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing an in wage of 5.4 percent.

And it comes on top of a colossal 22 per cent average rise dished out by Health Secretary Wes Streeting in 2015 in a desperate quote to stop the consistent strikes, after they required a 30 percent pay increase.

Their pressing needs for greater pay make my occupation, my long-lasting occupation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing, states Dr Max Pemberton

Junior physician members of the British Medical Association (BMA) on the picket line outside the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle in 2023

That craven capitulation by Labour didn't work, naturally - simply as surrender has proved not successful in mollifying the transport unions, the instructors and every other militant collective. The BMA justifies its ongoing push for higher pay by claiming physicians are worse off by about a quarter in real terms given that 2009.

The chairman of the BMA council, Professor Philip Banfield, sneers at the 4 percent boost, saying it 'takes us backwards, pressing pay repair even further into the range,' and includes ominously: 'No one wants a return to scenes of medical professionals on picket lines, but sadly this looks much more most likely.'

What else did anybody expect? Unions are mandated to require as much cash for their members as they can get. They do not exist to be sensible or to accept compromise. And when Labour tried to purchase them off, the unions picked up weakness. Prof Banfield understands there are more concessions to be won now, more pips to be squeezed.

But the NHS is not some private, profit-making corporation, and this is not a fight between a made use of workforce and fat feline investors. Our beleaguered health service is funded by all of us - and it is on its knees.

This is something most doctors can identify. Yet, over the previous years or more, the union has actually been more concerned with pursuing Left-wing programs than acting in the finest interest of its members.

For example, the BMA's leadership has declined to back the Cass Review, commissioned by the NHS as a report into gender identity services for kids and young individuals.

The findings by Dr Hilary Cass, published in 2015, encouraged against rushing under-18s into gender shift treatment, such as puberty blockers, that they might later on be sorry for.

It ought to not be the BMA's function to release into a dispute on the interpretation of medical evidence. That's what the Royal Colleges are for.

Sir Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. This year's pay rise comes after resident physicians were granted rises worth 22 percent by Mr Streeting in 2015

The union has violated its bounds, and I'm seriously dissatisfied about paying my membership to an organisation that makes political declarations in my name.

These include require a ceasefire in Gaza, for instance, and criticism of China for human rights abuses - as if Hamas is going to return Israeli hostages or Beijing is going to stop persecuting the Uighur minority, even if a medical professional's union in the UK requires it.

This is cheap virtue-signalling, provided for no other reason than to make the BMA execs feel good about themselves.

I would admire them much more if they put their energy into fact-checking their own claims. The BMA is susceptible to bandying about numbers that do not withstand examination.

A few of their figures relating to earnings and inflation have been debunked, utilizing data from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Since BMA members include physicians with competence in medical statistics, it's an embarrassment to everyone.

Most of all, I dislike them for losing the general public support for doctors that we made at excellent individual expense throughout the pandemic.

It is sickening that the genuine regard in which the medical occupation was held simply five years back has actually been replaced to a big degree by cynicism and even by displeasure.

Small marvel, then, that many junior doctors whine that their good friends with jobs in tech or banking are much better off than they are.

Junior physicians showing outside Downing Street last year throughout strike action