Money-grabbing medics are due to strike for six days from April 7 in what will be their 15th round of industrial action since 2023.
Easter is a time of resurrection, unless you find yourself inside an NHS hospital, that is.
Money-grabbing medics, as has become customary these past few years, are abandoning the NHS yet again to swan off on strike.
It will be the 15th round of industrial action by resident doctors in England since 2023.
As if this dereliction of duty wasn’t shameful enough, it will cost the hard-up health service £300m, inconvenience millions of patients, and comes at a time when it should be abundantly clear to all that the NHS is on its knees and the UK economy is on its uppers.
Still, what does that matter to the militants running our hospitals these days?
Health Secretary Wes Streeting is furious, so he says, but Labour has to shoulder the bulk of the blame.
From the moment the party entered office the Treasury vaults were opened to its paymasters.
Billions of taxpayers’ cash has been blown on inflation-busting public sector rises and the unions have smelt blood ever since.
While struggling families are left paying higher taxes, and the work shy are rewarded with bumper benefits, is it any wonder physicians are walking out?
Ironically named resident doctors – formerly junior doctors – are downing tools for six days in their long-running dispute over pay and jobs.
The British Medical Association said it was walking out because Mr Streeting had not done enough to address concerns over cash.
To give you some idea of the belligerence of this union Mr Streeting’s latest pay offer was rejected without it being put to members.
The walkout is due to start on April 7, the day after Easter Monday, and last until April 13.
The first of their carousel of strikes started on March 13, 2023.
Junior doctors were issued a 22% pay rise in July 2024 in an effort to end the bitter row. But resident doctors are after a further 26% hike.
The looming disruption means the fully qualified medics – providing patient care under the supervision of senior doctors in hospitals while undertaking specialist training to become consultants or GPs – will have deserted their posts five times in each of the past three years. To date 59 days have been lost to industrial action.
It is nothing short of appalling and shames the vast majority toiling to keep the NHS afloat.
Mr Streeting claimed the biggest percentage rises would have gone to the lowest paid, with average earnings of £52,000 for those starting out, with additional hours taken into account.
For the most experienced resident doctors, basic pay would have increased to £77,348 and average earnings would have exceeded £100,000.
On average, they would have been 35.2% better off than four years ago, he said.
To rub salt into the open wounds of long-suffering patients the BMA said resident doctors had been left with no choice but to strike and were walking out “to make the Government listen, stop the game playing, and come back with an offer that delivers fairly on both jobs and pay”.
Game playing?
After years of disruption the public has little sympathy left and is fed up with being held to ransom.
The NHS has become a joke, just like this cowardly Labour government. It’s a service where the doctor can’t, or in this case won’t, see you now.
YouGov polling shows 53% oppose resident doctors going on strike with just 38% in support.
NHS bosses say the walkout will be a “big hit to budgets and a terrible way to start the financial year”
That’s putting it mildly. Britain under this shower is on life support.
