Junior doctors staging the longest walkout in NHS history will alarm patients as well as their friends and families.
But this strike should have been avoided.
The British Medical Association has rejected the below-inflation 5% rise offered. This is not surprising when junior doctors in Scotland have been promised 14.5% over two years.
The Government needs to explain why medics in England are deemed less worthy than their counterparts north of the border.
Doctors are not walking out because of greed. The basic pay for the lowest-ranked doctors is £14.09 an hour – lower than the rate of many coffee shop workers.
If we continue to undervalue those who work in the health service, it will only make it harder to recruit and retain staff.
If the Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, cared about patients and cared about those who look after them, he would be doing everything he could to resolve this dispute.
Help falls short
After a week of dithering, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has finally responded to the Conservative-made mortgage crisis.
Under a scheme agreed with the Treasury, banks and building societies will allow some struggling borrowers to switch to interest-only payments for a six-month period.
There will also be a 12-month grace period for those facing repossession.
While this is welcome, it is far from the comprehensive package of help Labour is proposing, which homeowners desperately need. Missing entirely from this support scheme is any help for renters, who are facing landlords passing on their mortgage rate rises.
Households deserved better than this weak and inadequate response.
Work wonders
Working men’s clubs were once the hub of thousands of communities nationwide.
It is good to know many are still thriving – and that it’s working women who are now helping them prosper.
