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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to not support the junior doctors?

155 replies

MenMust · 05/09/2016 20:45

just that really. it seems to be about them wanting more pay rather than saving the NHS. am I wrong? feel free to educate me (rather than attacking me!) ....

OP posts:
Heidi41 · 05/09/2016 21:27

I feel as a nurse of 36 years I could never strike . I do this job because I love helping others. I get back much more than I give and I feel that it denigrates the profession by striking . I may only be a lowly nurse but we have been very poorly treated by successive governments yet have never and will never strike.

colouringinagain · 05/09/2016 21:27

The NHS is amazingly we simply have no idea how good it is. I strongly support the doctors and agree with many posters that this contract in operation would mean the end of the NHS. The papers may have switched sides but it's so important to support this action.

LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett · 05/09/2016 21:27

On the 'no cuts' thing.

They are taking a 5 day a week service and turning it into a 7 day a week service without having putting any more money into it. So they can say they haven't made cuts - the same amount of money has gone in - but that amount of funding has to then stretch that much further. And it's the junior doctors that are bearing the brunt of that.

Dontyoulovecalpol · 05/09/2016 21:28

This reply has been deleted

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Tryingtosaveup · 05/09/2016 21:33

I don't support the junior doctors. They earn far more than most people and are being greedy.
They are putting the patients at risk because they want more money.
The consultants support them because they know the government will alter their contracts next. Maybe some of them will have to spend more time in the NHS rather than coining it on the private sector.

Happyhippy45 · 05/09/2016 21:33

If you watch the BBC and believe that they are unbiased then you could be forgiven for thinking this. BBC is run by Tories. ALL their reporting has a Tory slant to it. Propaganda at its finest.

TaterTots · 05/09/2016 21:34

Am I the only one wondering why it would be such a bad thing if it WAS only about pay? A junior doctor's starting salary is around £23k. Would you put people's lives in your hands for that?

dontrustcharisma · 05/09/2016 21:38

I support the Junior Doctors. I think they are striking to save the NHS.
Strike laws mean you can only strike for pay and conditions. But actually the reason for the strike is far more than that.
and as an aside I think everyone should join a union and stick up for their pay and conditionas and fellow people.

dontrustcharisma · 05/09/2016 21:39

I support the Junior Doctors. I think they are striking to save the NHS.
Strike laws mean you can only strike for pay and conditions. But actually the reason for the strike is far more than that.
and as an aside I think everyone should join a union and stick up for their pay and conditionas and fellow people.

nocoolnamesleft · 05/09/2016 21:40

You have the right to your opinion on the matter, whichever way that opinion goes, as long as it is an informed opinion. Which means, of course, one not totally formed on the lies from the government via their mouth piece of the right wing press.

I, personally, support the junior doctors. As a hospital consultant in an acute speciality, every time they take industrial action, it has cost me in time, in effort, in organisational headaches to ensure safe cover. It has buggered up training sessions I had organised, and reorganised. It has caused me to stay very late into evenings, in order to cover the work I would have been doing if I hadn't been acting down on the wards to keep the situation safe. And yet I support them. Why?

The best description I can give is that the juniors have not asked for a new contract. The juniors are on a pretty crap contract already, including lots of working weekends and nights, switching hospitals every 4 months (1st 2 yrs) or 6 months (thereafter), often with little notice, and not getting the rotas so vital to child care, or indeed a life, until the last minute. They are regularly subject to emotional blackmail to cover the gaps in the rotas - gaps because we have a national recruitment crisis for doctors. Of course, that's not as bad in Wales/Scotland as in England, as the devolved parliaments have promised not to impose the new contract, and people are voting with their feet. They spend a fortune on compulsory courses, and spend much of their own time working for exams, or slaving over the abomination that is eportfolio.

But despite the current contract being pretty crap, they did not demand a new one. The government decided to bring one in. And the juniors said "For fuck's sake, we're used to being shafted, but now you're even removing the lube, and that's a step too far. We're going under here". And the government responded by unilaterally imposing the contract.

All it would take for all the current strikes to be lifted is for Jeremy Rhyming Slang to lift the threat of imminent unilateral imposition, and come back to the table. But he won't. After all, he wants to privatise the NHS. So he'll want to break it first. How do we know that? He co-authored a book with a chapter all about how we needed to do just that.

So I'll trust the junior doctors before a slimy mendacious NHS-hating weasel.

Elephantslovetofly · 05/09/2016 21:40

Tryingtosaveup do some proper research. Attitudes like this boil my piss. Hopefully you'll be happier when you have to pay for medical treatment

If it didn't majorly go against 'the rules' I'd give you some examples of what junior doctors deal with every day. We are not overpaid and are certainly not asking for a pay rise

acasualobserver · 05/09/2016 21:41

If the move to privatise healthcare is to happen then the NHS has to fail first. The Tories want this crisis.

ThreeSheetsToTheWind · 05/09/2016 21:45

I totally support them, they can strike as long as they like. They are on the front line. I have no doubt whatsoever in their integrity, afterall they are not politicians. I believe that they feel they have no other option left but to strike. I have more faith in them that I have in politicians.

queenofthepirates · 05/09/2016 21:48

Since we sailed into (childrens') A&E on a Friday evening and were in and out in 45 minutes, I would gladly name my next child after that doctor. They don't deserve this kind fo nonsense and do need our full support.
I plan to give it to them, in part by not getting ill when they feel the need to strike.

trafalgargal · 05/09/2016 21:48

Most people are working harder and earning less in real terms compared with ten years ago. The junior doctors aren't unreasonable in grumbling they are expected to work longer hours but neither is anyone else.

They'd probably get more sympathy if they used spokespeople with non public school accents and instead braying about the loss of their weekends talked about the real issues within the NHS. They are coming across as privelidged and entitled instead of as grown up doctors with valid concerns.

LellyMcKelly · 05/09/2016 21:51

I strongly support the junior doctors. This is about preserving the NHS, and about trying to make it an attractive employer in the future. Yes, doctors are reasonably well paid, but they train for 7 years, endure crazy shift work and have a hugely responsible job. Doctors are not here to cause trouble. They don't want to do that, but I trust my doctor friends and if they think something is SO awry that they feel compelled to strike, then I'd be inclined to trust them over that grinning bastard, Hunt.

CountryLovingGirl · 05/09/2016 21:52

100% support for the junior doctors from me. I hope they can make the government change their ways (ad ditch JH).

I work in the NHS and we have already had the '7 day service' forced on us with less pay. We are working loads of anti-social hours now (many late nights, nightshifts and weekends) and all with, you guessed it, NO EXTRA STAFF to provide the same level of service on a SAT/SUN. We were already providing a service at weekends. Many talented and dedicated staff, mostly female with children, have been forced out and many are on long term sick leave because of these changes. Something has to give...

Ness1234 · 05/09/2016 21:52

YABVU

Theimpossiblegirl · 05/09/2016 21:52

I don't support striking tube drivers or train drivers or air traffic controllers
I strongly support the junior doctors
Yabu if you think it's simplistic and just about money.

I fully support the junior doctors, but I also support the others. I'll be honest, I know little about Air Traffic Controllers, but I bet it's a bloody stressful job.
Tube drivers are striking over changes to contracts- they seem to have a good deal and earn a good wage, but why should they take it sitting down? I wouldn't like my hours changed that drastically with no negotiation or discussion, there must be a better way.
The train drivers' strikes (which have been more train managers, guards etc.) have been primarily to prevent changes in contracts that mean 1 person (the driver) is also responsible for checking the platform is clear, shutting doors etc. as well as driving. It's only going to take one person to run up and grab a door as the driver pulls away for that to be proven a big mistake as they are dragged under. The driver will be held fully responsible. There will also be no-one on the train other than the driver in an emergency. Can't see that one ending well either.
As for teachers, I fully support them too.
None of it is about the money, not for any of them.

Myusernameismyusername · 05/09/2016 21:54

It is pretty awful what is happening to them. I support them and I am NHS too. Most of the patients seem to understand too.

The NHS is dying and having worked in it for nearly 20 years it breaks my heart.

JudyCoolibar · 05/09/2016 21:55

By definition, junior doctors are pretty bright people. If they were solely motivated by money, they could walk into jobs that are way more lucrative than medicine that don't involve anything like the same hours or the same degree of responsibility. One of the most crass and appalling aspects of the government's treatment of this issue is their attempt to paint junior doctors as money-grubbing.

ScOffasDyke · 05/09/2016 21:55

What's wrong with public school accents? They're just as valid as every other kind of accent. A junior doctor is a junior doctor, regardless of background

HicDraconis · 05/09/2016 21:58

I don't think the junior doctors should strike. I doubt Hunt will be bothered (I assume he has private healthcare insurance anyway) and I don't think it will do anything other than alienate the public. Add cancelled elective surgery to biased news reporting and they will lose the support of many.

I think they should all resign, en masse. Every one. After couple of days I imagine a new contract will appear which doesn't put the doctors' lives at risk as well as the patients'.

I have fallen asleep at the wheel after a night shift at the end of an 80-90h week, I have worked with people seriously injured after car crashes on the way home from working the kinds of hours the new contract wishes to return to. It's not safe for the patients and it's not safe for the staff.

LordRothermereBlackshirtCunt · 05/09/2016 21:58

There is already a 20-page thread on here about this.

HeCantBeSerious · 05/09/2016 21:58

Try this, OP.