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

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

Their pressing demands for higher pay make my profession, my lifelong occupation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing. There are minutes when I nearly feel I might rip up my subscription card in frustration.

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

Unless these outrageous demands can be brought under control, I fear the NHS might be bankrupted.

The flashpoint this month is the BMA's need for a pay boost much better than the 4 per cent that was implemented on April 1 - an increase the union has dismissed as 'derisory'.

That 4 per cent is already above the rate of inflation, which is currently performing at 3.5 percent. In fact, the deal used to junior physicians (or 'resident medical professionals', as we're now supposed to call them) supplies considerably more, as they will receive an extra ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing a typical boost in income of 5.4 percent.

And it begins top of an enormous 22 per cent average increase provided by Health Secretary Wes Streeting last year in a desperate bid to put a stop to the consistent strikes, after they demanded a 30 percent pay increase.

Their pressing needs for higher pay make my profession, my long-lasting occupation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing, states Dr Max Pemberton

Junior physician 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 - simply as surrender has proved unsuccessful in mollifying the transport unions, the instructors and every other militant cumulative. The BMA validates its continued push for greater pay by declaring physicians are worse off by about a quarter in genuine terms since 2009.

The chairman of the BMA council, Professor Philip Banfield, sneers at the 4 percent boost, stating it 'takes us backwards, pressing pay remediation even further into the range,' and includes ominously: 'No one desires a go back to scenes of doctors on picket lines, but unfortunately this looks even more most likely.'

What else did anybody expect? Unions are mandated to demand as much cash for their members as they can get. They don't exist to be reasonable or to accept compromise. And when Labour tried to buy 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 fight 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 recognise. Yet, over the past decade or more, the union has been more worried with pursuing Left-wing programs than acting in the finest interest of its members.

For circumstances, 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 young people.

The findings by Dr Hilary Cass, released last year, advised against hurrying under-18s into gender shift treatment, such as puberty blockers, that they might later on be sorry for.

It should not be the BMA's function to launch into a debate on the analysis of medical proof. That's what the Royal Colleges are for.

Sir Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. This year's pay increase follows resident doctors were granted rises worth 22 per cent by Mr Streeting in 2015

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

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

This is cheap virtue-signalling, done for no other factor than to make the BMA officers feel excellent about themselves.

I would admire them a lot more if they put their energy into fact-checking their own claims. The BMA is vulnerable to bandying about numbers that do not stand up to analysis.

A few of their figures relating to earnings and inflation have actually been unmasked, utilizing information from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Since BMA members include doctors with knowledge in medical stats, it's an embarrassment to everybody.

Most of all, I detest them for wasting the public support for doctors that we earned at fantastic individual cost during the pandemic.

It is sickening that the real regard in which the medical profession was held just 5 years ago has been changed to a big degree by cynicism and even by displeasure.

Small wonder, then, that lots of junior doctors whine that their pals with jobs in tech or banking are much better off than they are.

Junior physicians demonstrating outside Downing Street last year during strike action

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

This crisis has been brewing a very long time, considering that before the 2010 coalition government.

Tony Blair's introduction of university fees in 1998 has led directly to the scenario today, where practically all my junior colleagues are in debt by up to ₤ 100,000 - or perhaps more.

As an outcome, an increasing number of more youthful colleagues seem to see a career in medication as chiefly transactional.

They argue that not just have they worked for their degree, however they have actually likewise purchased and paid for it. And that if they can make more money by stopping the NHS for the personal sector, or even by emigrating to practice abroad, for example in Australia, well, why should not they?

It's a significantly various outlook to that of my generation. As somebody who was fortunate enough to have his six years of medical training funded by the state, I see my role as a psychiatrist as even more than simply a job. It's my calling.

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

I personally think that one method to solve the crisis of disappointed and demanding young medical professionals is to treat student physicians and nurses as an unique case.

Instead of being obliged to get crippling loans, medical trainees need to register to have their years of training funded by the state.

In return, they would undertake to work exclusively within the NHS for, say, 15 years. Their financial obligation would not be a financial one but something deeper - a commitment to society.

Of course, they could break this obligation 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 doctors stayed in Britain, instead of emigrating, however might likewise have a deep mental result.

But the BMA do not bother themselves with services like this. Instead, they focus on political posturing and myopic and impractical pay needs. It likewise adds to a harmful generational divide between older physicians and a new generation with different worths.

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