Junior doctors 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 really mad. My medical union, the British Medical Association (BMA), is wasting public respect for doctors, crushing facts and pursuing Left-wing crusades without any regard for the cost to the health service.

Their insatiable demands for greater pay make my profession, my long-lasting vocation, look tawdry, cynical and money-grubbing. There are moments when I nearly feel I might rip up my subscription card in frustration.

But it isn't simply my union that is behaving so disgracefully. The genuine offender is the Labour government, whose ineptitude in union negotiations since coming to power has set off a greedy free-for-all.

Unless these outrageous demands 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 percent that was carried out on April 1 - an increase the union has dismissed as 'derisory'.

That 4 percent is currently above the rate of inflation, which is presently running at 3.5 per cent. In reality, the offer used to junior physicians (or 'resident doctors', as we're now expected to call them) supplies significantly more, as they will get an extra ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing a typical boost in wage of 5.4 percent.

And it comes on top of a colossal 22 percent average increase provided by Health Secretary Wes Streeting last year in a desperate quote to put a stop to the continuous strikes, after they required a 30 percent pay rise.

Their insatiable needs for greater pay make my occupation, my long-lasting occupation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing, says 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, obviously - just as surrender has actually proved not successful in mollifying the transportation unions, the instructors and every other militant cumulative. The BMA justifies its ongoing push for higher pay by declaring physicians are 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 increase, saying it 'takes us backwards, pressing pay repair even further into the distance,' and includes ominously: 'Nobody desires a go back to scenes of physicians on picket lines, but sadly this looks much more likely.'

What else did anyone expect? Unions are mandated to require as much money for their members as they can get. They do not exist to be sensible or to welcome compromise. And when Labour tried to purchase them off, the unions picked up 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 in between an exploited workforce and fat feline shareholders. Our beleaguered health service is moneyed by all of us - and it is on its knees.

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

For example, the BMA's leadership has actually 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, published last year, advised versus hurrying under-18s into gender transition treatment, such as puberty blockers, that they may later regret.

It ought to not be the BMA's function to launch into an argument 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 doctors were awarded increases worth 22 per cent by Mr Streeting in 2015

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

These consist of 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, even if a medical professional's union in the UK calls for it.

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

I would admire them a lot more if they put their energy into fact-checking their own claims. The BMA is prone to bandying about numbers that don't withstand examination.

Some of their figures relating to wages and inflation have actually been exposed, using information from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Since BMA members include physicians with competence in medical data, it's a shame to everybody.

Most of all, I detest them for squandering the general public support for physicians that we earned at great individual expense during the pandemic.

It is sickening that the authentic regard in which the medical occupation was held simply 5 years ago has been replaced to a large degree by cynicism and even by disapproval.

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

Junior doctors showing outside Downing Street last year throughout strike action

Medicine ought to be beyond contrast, not simply one of a raft of careers determined only by the monetary benefits they bring.

This crisis has been brewing a long period of time, since before the 2010 union federal 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 debt by as much as ₤ 100,000 - and even more.

As an outcome, an increasing variety of more youthful associates appear to see a profession in medicine as mainly transactional.

They argue that not just have they worked for their degree, but they've likewise bought and spent for it. Which if they can make more cash by stopping the NHS for the economic sector, or even by emigrating to practice abroad, for instance in Australia, well, why should not they?

It's a radically different outlook to that of my generation. As someone who was fortunate adequate to have his six years of medical training funded by the state, I see my role as a psychiatrist as far more than simply a job. It's my calling.

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I am deeply proud of what I do. Nothing else might replace it or give me the exact same degree of satisfaction.

I personally believe that one way to resolve the crisis of dissatisfied and requiring young medical professionals is to deal with student doctors and nurses as a diplomatic immunity.

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 however something deeper - a responsibility to society.

Obviously, they could break this commitment if they wanted - but then they would be accountable to pay back part or all the expense of their training.

This would not just ensure more junior physicians remained in Britain, rather than emigrating, however may likewise have a deep psychological result.

But the BMA don't bother themselves with services like this. Instead, they concentrate on political posturing and myopic and impractical pay needs. It likewise adds to a harmful generational divide between older doctors and a brand-new generation with various values.

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