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Junior medical professionals are threatening to strike 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 angry. My medical union, the British Medical Association (BMA), is misusing public respect for doctors, battering facts and pursuing Left-wing crusades with no regard for the cost to the health service.

Their pressing needs for greater pay make my profession, my long-lasting occupation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing. There are minutes when I nearly feel I could rip up my membership card in disappointment.

But it isn't simply my union that is behaving so disgracefully. The real offender is the Labour government, whose ineptitude in union settlements because coming to power has actually set off 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 demand for a pay increase much better than the 4 per cent that was executed 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 deal offered to junior physicians (or 'resident medical professionals', as we're now supposed to call them) provides significantly more, as they will receive an additional ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing an average boost in salary of 5.4 percent.

And it comes on top of a gigantic 22 percent average increase provided by Health Secretary Wes Streeting in 2015 in a desperate bid to put a stop to the constant strikes, after they required a 30 percent pay increase.

Their insatiable needs for greater pay make my occupation, my lifelong occupation, 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 instructors and every other militant collective. The BMA validates its ongoing push for greater pay by declaring medical professionals are worse off by about a quarter in real terms considering that 2009.

The chairman of the BMA council, Professor Philip Banfield, sneers at the 4 percent boost, saying it 'takes us backwards, pushing pay restoration even further into the range,' and includes ominously: 'Nobody wants a go back to scenes of doctors on picket lines, but sadly this looks even more likely.'

What else did anybody expect? Unions are mandated to require as much cash for their members as they can get. They don't exist to be reasonable or to embrace compromise. And when Labour tried to purchase 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 private, profit-making corporation, and this is not a battle in between an exploited workforce and fat feline investors. Our health service is funded by all of us - and it is on its knees.

This is something most doctors can identify. Yet, over the previous years or more, the union has been more concerned with pursuing Left-wing agendas than acting in the very best interest of its members.

For example, the BMA's leadership has refused to endorse the Cass Review, commissioned by the NHS as a report into gender identity services for kids and young individuals.

The findings by Dr Hilary Cass, published last year, advised against rushing under-18s into gender transition treatment, such as puberty blockers, that they might later on regret.

It must not be the BMA's function to launch into a dispute on the interpretation 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 medical professionals were awarded increases worth 22 per cent by Mr Streeting last year

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

These include calls for 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 persecuting the Uighur minority, just due to the fact that a physician's union in the UK calls for it.

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

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

Some of their figures regarding incomes and inflation have actually been unmasked, utilizing information from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Since BMA members consist of medical professionals with know-how in medical data, it's an embarrassment to everybody.

Most of all, I detest them for wasting the general public assistance for physicians that we earned at terrific individual expense during the pandemic.

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

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

Junior doctors demonstrating outside Downing Street last year throughout strike action

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

This crisis has been brewing a long period of time, since before the 2010 coalition government.

Tony Blair's introduction of university costs in 1998 has led straight to the scenario today, where practically all my junior coworkers are in financial obligation by up to ₤ 100,000 - or even more.

As an outcome, an increasing number of more youthful coworkers appear to see a profession in medication as primarily transactional.

They argue that not just have they worked for their degree, but they've likewise bought and paid for it. Which if they can earn more money by giving up the NHS for the private sector, or perhaps 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 somebody who was lucky sufficient to have his 6 years of medical training moneyed by the state, I see my function as a psychiatrist as much more than just a task. It's my calling.

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I am deeply pleased with what I do. Nothing else might replace it or provide me the same degree of satisfaction.

I personally believe that one method to fix the crisis of dissatisfied and demanding young medical professionals is to treat student medical professionals and nurses as a diplomatic immunity.

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

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

Of course, they might break this obligation if they wished - but then they would be liable to pay back part or all the expense of their training.

This would not just make sure more junior physicians remained in Britain, instead of emigrating, but may also have a deep psychological result.

But the BMA do not trouble themselves with options like this. Instead, they focus on political posturing and myopic and unrealistic pay demands. It likewise contributes to an unsafe generational divide in between older doctors and a brand-new generation with various values.

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