It is at this moment of maximum danger that the
BMA has chosen to go ahead with Christmas strikes when
it will inflict the greatest level of damage on the
NHS. The BMA said this dispute was about pay
, but we gave them a 28.9% pay rise.
Then they said it was also about jobs, so
we offered a deal to halve the competition for jobs
to less than 2 applicants per post. It is
now clear what these strikes are really about. The
BMA's fantasy demand for another 26% pay rise on top
of the 28.9% they have already received. I also
offered to extend the BMA's strike mandate so they could
postpone this action and go ahead once flu has subsided
. The fact they also rejected that offer shows a
shocking disregard for patient safety. Since this strike represents
a different magnitude of risk to previous industrial action,
I am appealing to ordinary resident doctors to ignore the
BMA strike and go to work this week. Abandoning
patients in their hour of greatest need goes against everything
a career in medicine is meant to be about.