Doctors Strike....

[Alfi]

Good for you Doc!

Alfi

[zebbo]

Just let me think about this for a moment. Some jumped-up stuffed shirt who is paid more in expenses than I earn in a year tells me that I'm not going to be paid "unsocial hours" unless it's outside of Mon-Sat, (inc), 07:00 - 22:00 ! I'd tell him to go do one too ! He, by the way, can claim extra expenses if he works beyond 19:00.
There's "paying your dues" and there's having the piss ripped out of you.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Then get a different job if you don't like it - simples

Don't give us all this crap about saving the NHS. They wanted to be doctors so grow up and be doctors. If you don't like it there are many people / companies including the rip off drug companies who employ qualified doctors. Private sector, go to USA (which lots of them do), just stop all this feckin' childish gripeing and putting patients lives at risk by striking.

[zebbo]

But that's just it Doc, that ISN'T what they signed up to. You just can't treat people like that - SIMPLES.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Yes they did, they signed up as Doctors to learn their profession not to go on strike. They may have had some sympathy from me, but they have acted as children and NO doctor should ever go on strike - full stop. If they do they should be sacked as they shouldn't have become doctors, it is that simple.

They made a BIG mistake and they have lost the support they had by these actions and are being made to look idiots which is why they are now backing down. I don't like this government, I don't like Gove, but I understand the problems they are trying to get a grip on and it is next to impossible, but as with all these thing you have to take a balanced decision. As soon as the Junior Doctors went on strike and I saw first hand their stupid child like behaviour they lost ANY sympathy I had. You should have seen the looks on their faces when I walked out of the hospital after my op and up to the *party* they were having on the pavement, some in fancy dress, and told them they should grow up and get back to work. They seemed astonished like any child who is not indulged.

[zebbo]

So anyone in training in the UK has no employment rights. If you're training your employer can do whatever the hell they want to you. Nice.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Doctors!! stop twisting my words. What about the rights of the tax payer. What about the rights of the patient. Or is the only thing that is important these spoilt children. They would love to think that is the case

[SteveTheShadow]

I'm afraid I have to agree with Zebbo.
If strikes in the public sector are to be illegal, then meddling with employees' terms and conditions in a negative direction by Governments of whatever colour should also be illegal.
The NHS, police, emergency services, should be funded with whatever money they need, regardless of any complaints from taxpayers, PUT UP TAXES! WE ARE NOT PAYING ENOUGH TO SUSTAIN THE PUBLIC SERVICES WE WANT. The fact that it would be electoral suicide for a British Government, even to suggest this, tells us more about the British than it does about Government. Too many of us are such a bunch of arseholes who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, and display such an entitled, I'm alright Jack attitude, that I genuinely fear for the fabric of our society unless attitudes change. I am sick to the back teeth of hearing the phrase "Why should I this, why should I that, why should I the other. BECAUSE IN A CIVILISED SOCIETY, YOU FECKING SHOULD...... FFS!

I do agree with the Doc however, about the stupid, childish attitude of the Junior Doctors as seen on far too many news reports. Strikes are a serious business and the bloody fools gurning, giggling and dressing up, is no way to conduct a piece of industrial action. That's the trouble with middle class professions such as this. Yes they do a marvelous job, but a lot of them need to get a serious dose of humility and give thanks to whatever God they worship that they are so privileged and stop behaving like it is a bit of high jinks and mummy and daddy will bail them out during the week without dosh.

I was part of the BT strike in the 80s, in fact I was suspended for working to rule, which of course is completely out of order, but the mass suspensions were carefully coordinated to provoke the strike in the first place as it was so much cheaper for BT not to have to have paid striking workers than would have been to pay them when they were working to rule and banning overtime. Of course we got pictures on TV of sawn through trunk coax cables, which as engineers we could see were obviously rigged, staged pictures; the manholes containing these "vandalised cables" were far too clean! However on any pictures of picket lines, the viewer would not have seen a single smile on anyone's face. As I said, strikes are a serious business. The difference is we were working class people and the strike that went on for four weeks crippled us. God knows how the miners would have coped for a full year without the help from our communities. Here in South Yorkshire, the scars still have not healed and probably won't until the last of us who were there and bear witness to what happened have passed away.

The Junior Docs with their childish behaviour are in a way betraying people like the miners, who fought and lost a battle for their existence against a regime that was determined to wipe them out, and succeeded.

[slinger]

Speaking as one who was on a picket line in a cold, damp, foggy, effing miserable October if we hadn't had a bit of a laugh and a joke amongst ourselves, and with the Police and the public come to that, some of my blokes would probably have stopped turning up. It's part of the team ethic; it's camaraderie. You can have a laugh at work to make the mood lighter, so why not on a picket line if you can muster one? The boys in the print were on strike same time as us, and they used to visit and vice-versa and we'd swap "war stories" and have a chuckle. I've taken personal time off work to join a nurses picket and they weren't miserable. I've stood with a firemen's picket line and they tried to have a laugh with passers by. The very fact that what you're doing IS so serious means you need to laugh sometimes or you'll end up crying. Perhaps they're more dour Oop North or something but in my experience of picket lines we didn't shuffle around wearing sack-cloth and ashes looking like we'd just scored a date with the grim reaper.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

It looks like you like strikes and join in everyone elses