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

This makes me truly angry. My medical union, the British Medical Association (BMA), is misusing public respect for physicians, battering facts and pursuing Left-wing crusades with no regard for the expense to the health service.

Their insatiable needs for greater pay make my profession, my long-lasting vocation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing. There are moments when I almost feel I might rip up my subscription card in aggravation.

But it isn't simply my union that is acting so disgracefully. The real perpetrator is the Labour government, whose ineptitude in union negotiations since coming to power has actually 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 need for a pay increase much 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 already above the rate of inflation, which is presently running at 3.5 per cent. In truth, the offer provided to junior medical professionals (or 'resident physicians', as we're now expected to call them) offers significantly more, as they will get an extra ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing a typical increase in salary of 5.4 percent.

And it comes on top of a colossal 22 per cent typical rise served up by Health Secretary Wes Streeting last year in a desperate bid to put a stop to the constant strikes, after they demanded a 30 per cent pay increase.

Their insatiable demands for higher pay make my occupation, my lifelong vocation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing, states Dr Max Pemberton

Junior doctor 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, of course - just as surrender has actually proved unsuccessful in mollifying the transportation unions, the teachers and every other militant cumulative. The BMA justifies its ongoing push for greater pay by claiming physicians are worse off by about a quarter in genuine terms because 2009.

The chairman of the BMA council, Professor Philip Banfield, sneers at the 4 per cent increase, saying it 'takes us backwards, pressing pay repair even further into the range,' and includes ominously: 'Nobody wants a go back to scenes of medical professionals on picket lines, but sadly this looks much more most likely.'

What else did anyone anticipate? Unions are mandated to demand as much cash for their members as they can get. They don't exist to be sensible or to embrace compromise. And when Labour shopped them off, the unions sensed weak point. 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 battle between an exploited workforce and fat feline investors. Our beleaguered health service is moneyed by all of us - and it is on its knees.

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

For instance, the BMA's leadership has declined to back the Cass Review, commissioned by the NHS as a report into gender identity services for children and youths.

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

It should not be the BMA's role to introduce into a debate on the analysis 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 increases worth 22 percent by Mr Streeting in 2015

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

These include require a ceasefire in Gaza, for example, and criticism of China for human rights abuses - as if Hamas is going to return Israeli hostages or Beijing is going to stop maltreating the Uighur minority, just since a physician's union in the UK requires it.

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

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

Some of their figures relating to incomes and inflation have been exposed, using data from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Since BMA members consist of physicians with expertise in medical stats, it's a humiliation to everyone.

Most of all, I dislike them for wasting the general public support for doctors that we made at terrific personal cost throughout the pandemic.

It is sickening that the authentic respect in which the medical profession was held simply 5 years back has actually been changed to a large degree by cynicism and even by displeasure.

Small marvel, then, that lots of junior physicians grumble that their buddies with tasks in tech or banking are much better off than they are.

Junior medical professionals demonstrating outside Downing Street last year throughout strike action

Medicine ought to be beyond comparison, not merely among a raft of careers measured only by the monetary benefits they bring.

This crisis has actually been brewing a very long time, given that before the 2010 union government.

Tony Blair's intro of university fees in 1998 has led straight to the situation today, where practically all my junior associates are in financial obligation by approximately ₤ 100,000 - and even more.

As an outcome, an increasing number of younger colleagues appear to see a profession in medicine as primarily transactional.

They argue that not only have they worked for their degree, however they have actually also purchased and paid for it. And that if they can earn more cash by giving up the NHS for the private sector, and even by emigrating to practise abroad, for instance in Australia, well, why should not they?

It's a significantly different outlook to that of my generation. As someone who was lucky sufficient to have his 6 years of medical training moneyed by the state, I see my function as a psychiatrist as even more than simply a task. It's my calling.

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I am deeply pleased with what I do. Nothing else could replace it or give me the same degree of fulfillment.

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

Instead of being required to secure crippling loans, medical trainees ought to sign up to have their years of training funded by the state.

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

Naturally, they might break this responsibility if they wanted - but then they would be liable to pay back part or all the cost of their training.

This would not only guarantee more junior doctors stayed in Britain, rather than emigrating, however might likewise have a deep psychological effect.

But the BMA don't bother themselves with options like this. Instead, they concentrate on political posturing and myopic and unrealistic pay needs. It also adds to an unsafe generational divide in between older doctors and a new generation with different worths.

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