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Junior physicians are threatening to strike once again. So what, you might say? When are they not threatening a walk-out? In the previous 2 years, they have taken commercial action 11 times.

This makes me truly mad. My medical union, the British Medical Association (BMA), is misusing public respect for medical professionals, mauling facts and pursuing Left-wing crusades without any regard for the expense to the health service.

Their pressing needs for higher pay make my occupation, my lifelong occupation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing. There are moments when I practically feel I might rip up my subscription card in disappointment.

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

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

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

That 4 per cent is currently above the rate of inflation, which is presently running at 3.5 per cent. In truth, the deal used to junior doctors (or 'resident doctors', as we're now supposed to call them) offers considerably more, as they will get an additional ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing an average increase in income of 5.4 percent.

And it begins top of a gigantic 22 percent typical increase provided by Health Secretary Wes Streeting in 2015 in a desperate bid to stop the consistent strikes, after they demanded a 30 per cent pay rise.

Their pressing needs for greater pay make my profession, my lifelong vocation, 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 - just as surrender has shown not successful in mollifying the transportation unions, the teachers and every other militant collective. The BMA validates its ongoing push for higher pay by claiming doctors are even worse off by about a quarter in real terms since 2009.

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

What else did anyone expect? Unions are mandated to demand as much cash for their members as they can get. They do not exist to be affordable or to welcome compromise. And when Labour shopped them off, the unions sensed weakness. Prof Banfield understands there are more concessions to be won now, more pips to be squeezed.

But the NHS is not some personal, profit-making corporation, and this is not a fight between an exploited workforce and fat cat investors. Our beleaguered health service is moneyed by all of us - and it is on its knees.

This is something most medical professionals can acknowledge. Yet, over the past decade or more, the union has actually been more worried with pursuing Left-wing agendas than acting in the very best interest of its members.

For instance, the BMA's leadership has actually refused 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 versus rushing under-18s into gender transition treatment, such as the age of puberty blockers, that they may later on be sorry for.

It needs to not be the BMA's function to introduce into a debate 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 per cent by Mr Streeting in 2015

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

These consist of require a ceasefire in Gaza, for instance, and criticism of China for human rights abuses - as if Hamas is going to return Israeli captives or Beijing is going to stop persecuting the Uighur minority, simply since a doctor's union in the UK calls for it.

This is inexpensive virtue-signalling, done for no other reason than to make the BMA execs feel excellent about themselves.

I would appreciate them a lot more if they put their energy into fact-checking their own claims. The BMA is vulnerable to bandying about numbers that do not stand up to examination.

A few of their figures relating to salaries and inflation have been exposed, using information from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Since BMA members consist of medical professionals with expertise in medical stats, it's a humiliation to everybody.

Most of all, I detest them for losing the general public support for doctors that we made at fantastic personal expense throughout the pandemic.

It is sickening that the authentic regard in which the medical profession was held just five years ago has been replaced to a large degree by cynicism and even by disapproval.

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

Junior doctors demonstrating outside Downing Street last year throughout strike action

Medicine ought to be beyond comparison, not merely one of a raft of careers measured just by the financial rewards they bring.

This crisis has been brewing a long period of time, since before the 2010 union government.

Tony Blair's introduction of university charges in 1998 has led directly to the situation today, where almost all my junior associates are in financial obligation by up to ₤ 100,000 - and even more.

As a result, an increasing variety of younger colleagues seem to see a career in medicine as mainly transactional.

They argue that not just have they worked for their degree, however they have actually likewise bought and paid for it. And that if they can earn more cash by quitting the NHS for the private sector, and even by emigrating to practice abroad, for instance in Australia, well, why should not they?

It's a significantly various outlook to that of my generation. As somebody who was lucky sufficient to have his six years of medical by the state, I see my role as a psychiatrist as far more than simply a task. It's my calling.

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I am deeply proud of what I do. Nothing else could change it or provide me the exact same degree of fulfillment.

I personally think that a person method to resolve the crisis of dissatisfied and requiring young physicians is to treat student physicians and nurses as a special case.

Instead of being required to get debilitating loans, medical trainees should register to have their years of training moneyed by the state.

In return, they would carry out to work specifically within the NHS for, say, 15 years. Their financial obligation would not be a financial one but something much deeper - a commitment to society.

Of course, they could break this responsibility if they wished - but then they would be responsible to repay part or all the cost of their training.

This would not just make sure more junior doctors remained in Britain, instead of emigrating, however may likewise have a deep psychological effect.

But the BMA don't bother themselves with services like this. Instead, they focus on political posturing and myopic and impractical pay demands. It likewise contributes to an unsafe generational divide between older medical professionals and a new generation with different worths.

Unless the union pertains to its senses, it will do countless damage to the NHS - the one organisation we are meant to serve.