Junior doctors get what looks to me like a very generous salary when they’ve been working their ***ses orf for about eight years in our desperately overstretched NHS.
Just how hard would you work, just how much overtime would you accept, just how much life-or-death responsibility would you bear, in a job that would pay you well after around eight years?
If we want to have doctors and nurses there, ready to help us when terrible things happen, we seriously need to make their jobs worth doing.
Until we manage that, we need to remind each other that nurses and junior doctors, along with the excruciatingly poorly paid ancillary staff, are the people who keep our NHS going, who rush around trying to deal with our daily disasters in A&E, getting as stressed out as we do by the massive queues, and trying not to show it, because it upsets already anxious patients.
Who is on our side?
Our government does not love the NHS. If anyone doubted that, we learned during the COVID crisis, when government ministers were quite openly gazumping the NHS to grab nice little earners such as ‘track and trace’ and ‘bargain ppe’. The opposition party set to replace this criminal government (I really hope they do – even I will vote Labour where it’ll get this dreadful government out) … Labour, the ‘opposition party’ is led by a man who gets funds from private health care, and he plans to have another MP who’s funded by private health care as his health minister when Labour wins that next election.
We are on our side
So if we can’t trust the government, and we already know we can’t trust the next government, do we give in and stay at home?
Please don’t. We need our NHS, we need our doctors and nurses, in the same way we need all our key workers, to keep us safe and keep our lives running. Given the political system in this country, we can almost guarantee that the next election will return a Tory, a Labour or a hung parliament. The current line-up in the Labour Party won’t do more than they have to for essential workers, so we have to make them ‘have to’ by being very, very determined and keep on telling them.
That’s why I still turn out to support public sector workers when they strike. I was delighted, when I went to the junior doctors’ demo outside my local hospital this week, to find our borough council leader, Paul Barnett also there in support…
Please support public sector workers – we need them. And please encourage your local politicians to help by turning up in support. Tell them you’re not voting for anyone you haven’t seen on a picket line and when they come round a-canvassing, locally or nationally, remember to tell them what you expect of them, and make sure decent pay and conditions for essential workers is big on your list.
See you on a picket line somewhere, soon!
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Dear Reader,
Times are hard, and so the articles on this site are freely available but if you are able to support my work by making a donation, I am very grateful.
Cheers,
Kay
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Kay Green 