Junior doctor strike

‘The spring of discontent’

11 min listen

Are we looking at a spring of discontent? It’s the final push ahead of this week’s local elections, and what Keir Starmer wants to talk about is expanding the NHS app – which he says will cut waiting lists and end the days of the health service living in the ‘dark ages’. However, what people are actually talking about is public sector pay. The independent pay review body has recommended pay rises of around 4 per cent for teachers and nurses. Will there be industrial action? Are Labour going to be pushed into another round of public sector pay increases? Meanwhile, after Ben Houchen’s comments this weekend, the murmurs of

What I got wrong about junior doctors

I recently wrote a column elsewhere about the junior doctors strike. As if often the way with this topic, it resulted in some strong and sometimes vituperative reactions.  It also led to many conversations with people in and around medicine.  Some of them thought I’d got things wrong. That’s a reasonable position to take, and it’s often useful to take criticism seriously. So I had a think about the column again, and concluded that there were indeed a few things I could have done better at.   Retention Of the various ‘you’ve got your facts wrong’ critiques of my column, the one I think that has most weight is that I