The Junior Doctor Strike will undoubtedly open junior doctors to a barrage of abuse from many mainstream media outlets. Junior doctors feel undervalued, under-resourced and unrepresented in many media forums with the BBC being singled out markedly.

I have been contacted by a junior doctor who would like to get his opinion across. It is well worth a read:

The British Medical Association has balloted all of its junior doctors on industrial action over the contract changes proposed by Jeremy Hunt, the Department of Health and NHS England. The ballot has approved a strike with 98% of those being in favour of a full walk out. The BMA has issued details of the proposed industrial action, which will initially involve “emergency care only” (essentially, a Saturday service) for 24 hours on the 1st of December, followed by an entire withdrawal of all junior doctor labour for nine hours on the 8th and the 16th of December. Many consultants, supportive of our, position have offered to provide full medical cover during the strike.

However, Jeremy Hunt, self-interested members of the current medical leadership, conservative politicians and the journalists they keep in their back pockets have been quick to condemn such strike action as “appalling” and “disproportionate”. I will be striking with a totally clear conscience. I and other junior doctors are angry. Very angry. We are a clutch of (usually) well behaved, quiet, high-achieving school children who have subsequently dedicated our working lives to the health and care of others. The day we march on Whitehall in our tens of thousands stating a that proposed contract will endanger patients lives and stop us being able to pay our mortgages should cause grave concern. Instead it prompted smear campaigns and derision.

We have been called militant, self-serving, greedy, lazy and everything in between. We have had Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of NHS England, using the recent attacks in Paris in an attempt to instill a feeling of guilt amongst doctors who are exercising their human right to withdraw labour. What an utterly contemptible statement from a man who should be supporting those who will one day take the reins from him. He is not much better than the couch-potato, mouth breathing Daily Mail comment army, who I’m sure won’t be happy until we are all chained to a nurses station, eating bread and drinking water.

It is not our kind that are the demons here, but the politicians and government advisors; the ones starving the NHS of funds whilst they sit on the boards of private health firms, rubbing their hands with glee. WE are not greedy. WE are not overpaid. We want a fair deal for ourselves and for the patients we serve, but this is being prevented by a destructive contract which totally disregards the realities of medical cover in NHS hospitals and which will push the NHS one step further towards privatisation. What’s more, is that it is being foisted upon us by an unpleasant individual who has never looked after anyone else but himself.

Jeremy Hunt is an inept, self-serving and risible character. His lengthy charge sheet includes defrauding parliament of £9,500 in second home expenses, back-channeling information to Rupert Murdoch during the attempted BSkyB takeover, charging the state £8000 for mandarin lessons to enable him to better communicate with his wife, and leaking patient confidential information on his twitter page. You may wonder why such an individual has been given responsibility for the national health budget. I certainly do.

Aside from the £77,000 salary he garners for his work as a cabinet minister, his position as cofounder of a company called Hotcourses, for which he performs no managerial work, has recently yielded him a windfall of £960,000. You will imagine my surprise then, when I hear that a gentleman of this calibre says we should be reminded of our “vocation” when it comes to our pay and conditions. Never has a statement been so misjudged and rallied so many.

Mr. Hunt continues to talk of the “weekend effect” on an almost daily basis. That’s when he isn’t busy being ignored by doctors in the hospitals he visits. The weekend effect is a well recognised phenomenon internationally, which has been researched and published upon by doctors (not politicians). Mr. Hunt will tell you those who are admitted on Saturday and Sunday are more likely to die because of a lack of medical staff. This is simply untrue. What Mr. Hunt fails to mention is that they are more likely to die within 30 days, during which time they will have been seen by a myriad of varied medical staff of all grades. But this is a small detail to gloss over when you are trying to pretend this problem is the fault of the lazy doctors who have locked up the hospital and gone to play golf on Sunday, rather than a product of individuals who are, on average, much sicker presenting themselves to us at weekends.

The authors of the study in question have accused Mr. Hunt of deliberately misrepresenting the evidence for his own ends, but this seems to have been largely ignored by the secretary of state. He continues to use this botched statistic in attempts to force through a contract that is designed to squeeze more antisocial hours out of doctors, for less money. Why else would you attempt to re categorise Saturday night at 10 p.m. as sociable?

Which brings me on to the contract itself. It is based on a report from the review body on doctors and dentists remuneration who, up until last year, were largely ignored when their recommendations didn’t fit in with the government’s agenda, particularly when it came to inflation linked pay rises. It is headed by an economist, of all people. The proposed contract cuts doctors pay. Mr. Hunt will insist we are getting a pay rise, but saying something loudly, over and over again doesn’t make it true. Why the need for “pay protection”, then? (That little concession also runs out after three years, by the way). It penalises us for taking time out to perform research. It penalises women for having babies. It says we are worth the same whether we have worked in the same role in the NHS for one year or twenty years. Experience in looking after patients is valueless, apparently. It says any non-NHS work we perform must be paid back to our employing hospital. It removes the fines that prevent hospitals overworking us and the example rotas from NHS England have been entirely laughable. It includes the daytime hours after a night shift (the time when we should be sleeping) as a day off! As we all know, tired people make mistakes. I don’t want to be the doctor who accidentally adds a zero to a morphine prescription because some here today, gone tomorrow health minister wanted to save some money. I suspect the public don’t want to be the patients on the end of these mistakes, either.

These are just some of the 22 contract clauses which the DoH have threatened to impose if we fail to agree with them and the secretary. That’s the way to negotiate, Jeremy! But even the DDRB says this is not achievable without extra funding. So where does the secretary get the idea that it is possible to make these changes within a “neutral pay envelope”? The chancellor, perhaps? Yeah, I don’t know either, but he’s still trying.

The secretary of state is using complicated mathematics to try and pull the wool over our eyes, hoping we will dance around with glee, salivating at the thought of 11% more money and sign the piece of DoH toilet paper he calls a contract. We won’t. We aren’t that stupid. That’s how we got this job in the first place.

We aren’t entirely masochistic though, much less sadistic. Ultimately, we want to avoid a strike. We like our patients, even the drunk ones who tell us to “fuck off” sometimes. They’re amusing at least! But we cannot avoid striking when this government stance is maintained. Despite widespread bad feeling we will negotiate with this fool of a man and have offered to do so, via the mediator ACAS. He has said it is not needed at this stage, because there is an independent offer already on the table. You know, the one we said we didn’t want? He should ask his GP to refer him to the audiology department.

What will happen now? A first day of striking, at least, is inevitable. There will be no further negotiation until the threat of imposition is removed. That is entirely down to the secretary of state, or whoever it is that replaces him. Until that happens, we will remain steadfast in order to protect ourselves, our patients and the NHS we have dedicated our working lives to. We must not blink first.