Grandpa's message to Junior Doctors, this is what you are up against!

 

Make no Mistake Oh Junior Doctors, this is not going to be easy! 

• For better or for worse the Government has announced the intention of having a 7 day a week N.H.S.
• This doesn't exist anywhere else in the world, East or West.
• Mr Hunt is a career politician and he is banking on achieving the 7 day a week service without any extra budget.
• It is worth remembering that his co MP Mr Boris Johnson failed to create a 24 hour Underground Service.
• Both of these boys are more ambitious for themselves than they are for you, that's the nature of most of today's politicians and trades union leaders and that is a pity, it makes your position difficult because you are mostly there to serve first.
• Most of you don't want to strike, you just want to get on with your valuable service and complete your training.  You are probably completely nonplussed by your employer seeking to downgrade your quite modest financial expectations and your hope of having a half normal family life by his idea of crazy rostering which means that you will be penalised for taking time off for research or raising a family.
• It is unusual to see a "safe pair of hands" taking quite such brutal action at the expense of his core workers welfare and reasonable expectations.
• It is mad to have a Chief of Staff forcing his rising stars to leave the company and country.
• You have the support of many consultants, the Royal Colleges of Physicians, Surgeons and Nurses.  You have the support of many patients.
• The consultants by and large will try to cover for you on Strike Days.
• Mr Hunt will use all means to undermine this support and continue to blame YOU for killing patients at the weekend and of just being left wing.
• Don't lost the suppport of the sane and reasonable by falling in with rabble rousers who have their own political agenda.
• Don't be surprised by Sir Robert Francis's intervention, he is a budget control man, not a man of service.
• The Press especially the so called "Quality" papers appear to be either against you or to be ambivalent.  It seems to me that they haven't been properly appraised of the detail in this dispute and are keen to promote their own ideas with the good old maxim "Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up."
• The BMA need to find someone in the BBC and Press who can follow the argument in detail.
• I favour Matt Ridley of the Times.  He is interested in FACTS.  He is/was visiting professor at Cold Spring Harbour, a New York medical research non profit institute.
• Get the PUBLIC onside and take heart, you have got me and I am going to alert every other Grandpa I know.