‘Nobody wants to be here’: cheers and sadness on junior doctors’ picket line

Dr Lauren Wallace on the picket line outside Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

It was a morning of strikingly mixed emotions as about 50 junior doctors joined a picket line outside Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI): none wanted to be there but all thought they had no option.

Lauren Wallace, a doctor in the plastic surgery department, was carrying a placard featuring some updated Dolly Parton lyrics: “Workin’ nine to nine / It’s no way to make a livin’ …”