Junior doctors are accused of risking patient’s lives in their “political game” as a leak of more than 1,000 pages of WhatsApp exchanges, dating back to November, reveal
Junior doctors put patient’s lives on the line so they could get more saturday overtime whilst all the time claiming the strikes were about patient safety. And the interest from the BBC now? Zilch.
I have been looking hard, very hard, and yet I can’t find the story on the BBC about the NHS doctors who were not really at all interested in patient safety but were striking for money…and intended to make the strike intensely political.
“I don’t care about anything apart from extracting the best contract. Don’t give a shit about anything else.”
The BBC reported the junior doctors’ strikes and complaints relentlessly and without much effort to challenge those doctors who were interviewed and asserted that this was all about patient safety…nothing to do with money…when it was patently obvious the major sticking point was saturday overtime…ie money.
The Independent has it, the Mail, the Telegraph, the Times, the Spectator and no doubt many others…just not the BBC, nor indeed the Guardian. You might have thought this was an important story, such a major clash between government and doctors, so much BBC coverage previously…and it all turns out to have been about money and the BMA’s own political stance. Apparently the BBC has lost interest.
Still…here’s the Independent..
Huge leak of data reveals junior doctors leaders discussed drawing out dispute for a year
The junior doctor leadership of the British Medical Association discussed “drawing out” their contract dispute with the Government for more than a year, a huge leak of private messages sent between the union’s committee members reveals.
Despite publicly stating throughout their dispute that a solution could be reached if the Government was willing to negotiate, Dr Johann Malawana suggested to junior doctor committee members in December that “the best solution may actually [be] to draw this right out” and proposed “a strategy that tied the DH [Department of Health] up in knots for the next 16-18 months”…. “play the political game of always looking reasonable”.
The messages also reveal that, in December, another committee member and former chair, Dr Kitty Mohan, described the issue of Saturday pay as the “only real red line” for negotiations – appearing to contradict the BMA’s public statements that the negotiations still needed to address issues of patient safety and working conditions as well as pay.
“The more I think about it the more I love our plan. Basically five weeks of headlines about juniors strikes through January and February.”
Well yes, success for the BMA. They certainly got the headlines from the BBC…mostly uncritical acceptance of the BMA’s claims that this was about patient safety…when obviously it was nothing like.
This is a story that has been out all day and yet nothing on the BBC website or on the radio as far as I have heard.
Fairly disgraceful the BBC are not hammering the junior doctors for having misled the public for so long….the same BBC that always crowed that the Junior doctors had so much public support….wonder how much support they would have now? The BBC though is happy to continue its hammering of the NHS, or rather, the government’s handling of the NHS as it asks…
Is the ambulance service in crisis?
Just why might the ambulance service, and A&E and the NHS in general be under pressure?
There is this little line buried at the bottom of the report…
The ambulance service now deals with over 9m calls a year – double the number it received a decade ago. But as well as seeing more patients, ambulance crews are being asked to do more with them.
Double the number it received a decade ago!!?? And why might that be? The NHS is under so much pressure because of mass, uncontrolled immigration. Millions of new residents all expect free treatment on the British NHS and they get it…and millions more are heading our way…but again the BBC, whilst reporting the net migration figures dodges the really significant part of the new immigration figures…..from the Telegraph….
Population to surge by four million due to mass immigration that will ‘change the face of England forever’
Alp Mehmet, vice chairman of the campaign group Migration Watch UK, said: “The population of England is projected to grow by 4.1 million over the next 10 years, the majority of which is down to the effects of international migration.
“The country is already facing a housing crisis and there is huge pressure on GP services.
“Meanwhile there is projected to be a shortfall in primary school places in the very near future. These figures can only make a bad situation a whole lot worse.”
Always odd what the BBC decides to omit from the news…or waits until it thinks it has been able to concoct a narrative that limits the damage of any story that makes the left-wing liberal story look bad.
Update [Thanks to Gunner] The BBC has finally gotten around to reporting the revelations about the junior doctors’ strike…well, no, it hasn’t reported it…the story, buried well down the frontpage, has merely been marked down as an opinion piece, something of interest along with the days old story of ‘The ghost of Blair haunting the Labour Party’.
The BBC piece tells us that this was ‘the most acrimonious row between doctors and government in modern times and the first ever walkout affecting all care by medics in the history of the NHS’ and yet a bombshell revelation that the junior doctors deliberately misled the public about the true cause of the strikes and literally put thousands of patients at risk doesn’t make headline news…which when you compare the extensive and intensive coverage the BBC gave to the doctors when they were striking is remarkable.
The BBC’s Hugh Pym has already relegated this story to history, telling us it is merely a small piece, a minor detail, in the history of the dispute that one day will be told in full…but he dismisses the latest revelations as merely the first draft of history being drawn up…didn’t say that when the strikes were on….then every little word was evidence of the NHS in crisis and high political drama.
He then goes on to actually miss out the most damning accusations about this being all about money and lives being put at risk and finally suggests this wasn’t a leak at all but a deliberate revelation by the BMA’s JDC to show that it is the good guy…
The string of messages could have been passed to HSJ with the tacit blessing of the junior doctors’ committee to show they were prepared to stand up to the government and fight for as long as it took to get an acceptable settlement.
There have been mutterings in some quarters that the leadership compromised too much to reach the final deal.
What tosh. The BBC will be telling us next that the rapes and sex abuse in Cologne were the result of a conspiracy by the Right-wing (whoever they are) to make immigrants look bad.
The BMA has been caught with its pants down and now the BBC is covering their blushes.
The juniordoctors dispute was always political, as the BBC political leaders in the Socialist Workers Party indicated from the start.
https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/42449/Activists+build+solidarity+as+junior+doctors+escalate+strikes
Says the Trots
‘The Tories are in crisis. We must not let this opportunity to strike a blow against austerity pass’.
Indeed and it poses a lot of very worrying questions about the future of health care in the UK. Do we really want doctors who are motivated more by bizarre notions of class warfare rather than patient welfare? Heaven knows, we have enough trouble as it is, with medical schools deliberately favouring future ISIS terrorists because they, like so many British institutions, have been take over by the bien pensant Left.
Pym posted an hour ago- I guess they realised they couldn’t keep a lid on it- so left it late, and hope to bury tomorrow. Their only problem is this one has legs.
Doctoring the news? The BBC? The very idea.
Oh, here’s what they have on Facebook currently:
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Radio 4 is making a documentary about racial anxiety in a time of terror, called ‘Frightened of each other’s shadows’. Do you find yourself worrying about plane journeys and analysing the appearance of fellow passengers before take-off? Do people make stupid jokes about terrorism when you’re around or move away from you on the tube if you’re wearing a backback? We’d like to hear from you. You don’t need to give us your name and your contribution can be anonymous. Please email the programme team: shadows.documentary@bbc.co.uk
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Contributions can be anonymous, so even the BBC editorial filter can rest easy. Simply call in the drama department.
Anyone told Mama the BBC are the envy of the world? Apparently.
Ps: the comments in response seem less than impressed so far.
Do people make stupid jokes about terrorism when you’re around or move away from you on the tube if you’re wearing a backback?
Hmmm, that question seems to be aimed at people of a certain appearance as if you’re white and wearing a backpack nobody would give it a second thought.
Another Muslim victimhood session in the offing, I’ll wager.
The BBC probably knew all along that the greedy doctors were only after more money but were happy to assist them into hoodwinking the credulous public into believing that the strike was about patients safety, with the added bonus of damaging the government. The BBC would take a very dim view of well educated professional folks in the private sector holding the country to ransom , but its OK in the public sector of course. The only reason that the BBC have been forced to to put anything about this on their ‘ news service’ is that the story is already all over the press and was broken by Guido et al yesterday. No doubt the BBC are already preparing some propaganda pieces designed to restore the doctors public reputation as angels to repair the damage.
Jeremy Hunt can expect no comments from the BBC along the lines that he was right all along and that all NHS users should thank him for sticking to his guns in the face of vitriolic attacks and lies from all the liberal left media. He has done us all a great service.
The EU referendum came at an excellent time for the BBC , because Cameron needed the corporation to help bully the country into voting remain, they got a charter settlement that was much better than it ought to have been. It won’t be long before we know if this unholy alliance succeeded. But even if the country does vote remain, the Tories must have a re-think about the BBC charter. Their one sided slant to the doctors strikes must surely arouse anger within the Tory party. A government elected on a the promise of a 7 day NHS is being thwarted by a privileged state remunerated elite purely for their own greed and the BBC propagandizes against the government. Nothing new in that of course. But even though Cameron may still need the BBC to help stamp out any last vestiges of resistance to the Brussels takeover , surely the rest of the Tories must see that the BBC is implacably opposed to anything but a leftist government. Perhaps even Cameron can see that a bit of BBC bashing would go down a treat with the rest of the Tory party and help to restore his reputation which is in tatters.
In my view getting rid of the BBC would be more important than getting rid of Brussels because I think that the EU will implode within 5 years anyway. But VOTE LEAVE will kill both birds with one stone because the Brexiteers will deal with the BBC soon enough if they win.
Probably less about their working in the public sector and more about the fact that a very high proportion are foreign ethnics! The BBC are always pro any policy that transfers money, or power, from the indigenous population to BAMEs.
A high proportion of the spokes people for the junior doctors seem to be foreign ethnics too including the chairperson of the Junior doctors committee. Shit stirrers?
https://www.bma.org.uk/about-us/leadership/biography-johann-malawana
I think that there was a brief report about the doctors’ messages on the radio 4 news bulletin but it also included a response from the BMA saying that the messages were ‘private’. Usual BBC manipulation to achieve bias. So there we are folks, the strikes really were all about patient safety and ‘ saving our NHS’ after all!!
If you go back to 1948, the NHS was founded only because of a sweetheart deal with the consultants and the basic lineup of vested interest has remained ever since.
The BMA has played a blinder by APPEARING to care about patients when in reality it is no different and no better than the RMT and Bob Crowe.
I don’t blame them for doing what they do. I blame the government and especially a truly stupid and gullible public for soaking up all the caring, sharing guff and allowing them to get away with it time and time again.
What % of GPs opted out from weekend cover in the 2005 ‘new deal’? Was it 95%. Patricia Hewitt’s idea of investing in the NHS was to give the doctors a massive pay rise for doing less work. The patients saw didddly squat from that ‘investment’.
Hewitt knew exactly what she was doing, keeping up the payments to buy the doctors loyalty to Labour. By buying the doctors loyalty the Labour party keeps the NHS as a weapon to hit the Tories with. The doctors know that Labour will huff and puff about change or modernisation of the NHS but that in the end it will mean only that doctors are bunged more tax payers money. In return the Labour party relies on the doctors to spearhead any resistance to change sponsored by the Tories and to dupe a credulous public into believing that ‘Our NHS’ is only safe in Labour’s hands. The role of the BBC in giving the doctors credibility and platform is crucial in this deception of the public. Nowadays doctors are paid so much that many of them work part time which contributes enormously to the so called doctor shortage.
The strike was encouraged by the BBC without doubt, that ‘not all Doctors’ understood the clever ploy to escalate the Junior Doctors issue (used by BMA to ‘weaponise the NHS’ as Corbyn would say) the NHS. Older Doctors are very well paid for the ‘inconvenient hours’ anyway, and 24hrs is what the general population expect already – but don’t get. For the BBC ‘progressives’ (on a ‘state-subsidised’ BUPA health-care scheme) it is a world away from their own (BBC) experience- are happy to equate BMA claim that it is a national underfunding ‘health issue’ requiring more money = better service. (Simplistic) But its not even that simple. Immigration makes a huge claim on NHS resources from third world countries that have no (or little) health care. We do not discriminate, and yet we cannot provide the world with free healthcare. And then the NHS is the largest employer for third World Doctors who would rather work in our heavily state subsidised NHS healthcare than suffer the deprivations of their own country of origin. We are taking ‘Doctors’ from other nations. We could take some of that ‘Cameron Lucozade’ he keeps donating (1% of our GDP) for more money to African despots to spend on their (home) Hospitals (joke), and not offering their fleeing Doctors a higher wages to come and work in NHS Britain. That needs looking at.
How many of those Doctors are barely qualified, sometimes totally unqualified for the NHS positions that they now claim ‘extra money’ for doing a job that pays well – once passes the ‘intern’ stage. Whatever we are paying for third World doctors, it is obviously too much, if they can afford to go on strike over more money. And the BBC would give it (NHS) all away for free. Except the BBC charges £150 a year and that generates £3.8 Billion annually and they are not giving THAT away for free. If the BBC work 24hrs (some claim they do) then that money would be better spent on funding the NHS Junior Doctors and then if we added the (BBC) BUPA funding they receive they could all have a huge NHS windfall for working unsocial hours. The BBC are not likely going to agree with that.
The BMA leadership is dominated by the Corbyn-supporting Hard Left, so this strike has always been political.
Funny how this somehow evaded the BBC and their 70% news coverage.
BMA council member Jacky Davis, a consultant radiologist, supported and spoke at a Jeremy Corbyn fundraiser, according to the Telegraph, and also tweeted: ‘Now we can all vote Labour again’ when he was elected leader.
Fellow member David Wrigley tweeted that with Corbyn in charge of Labour: ‘We can beat the Tories & make this country great again’.
Clive Peedell, a BMA council member and co-chair of the NHS Consultants Association who stood against David Cameron in his Witney constituency in May, tweeted: ‘Labour members have got their party back’ when Jeremy Corbyn was elected in September.
London consultant and Labour member Tom Dolphin, urged Twitter followers to vote Labour and said in a tweet to Jeremy Corbyn: ‘The Labour Party must build on the surge of support you bring with you to take on the Tories.’
And Yannis Gourtsoyannis, a member of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, posted on the BMA website: ‘A victory for the Junior Doctors would signify the first real crack in the entire edifice of austerity in the UK’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3386666/The-anti-Government-medics-doctors-strike-said-Tory-lies-shame-Goebbels-backed-Jeremy-Corbyn-make-Britain-great-again.html#ixzz49sDYSDFC
And to confirm that. I have just had this in from theTaxpayes Alliiance bulletin.
‘Many of you will doubtless have shared our shock at the leaked British Medical Associaton messages published yesterday. They showed the ring leaders of the doctors’ union admitting not only that their strike action was part of a “political game” but also that it was really about pay – and not patient safety as they had publicly been claiming. My reaction was covered by many outlets, including Sky News, the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mirror, while our Research Director, Alex Wild, who has been keeping a close eye on developments, was interviewed about it on LBC Radio. Click here to listen. The Doctors were duped by the BBC claiming nationwide support for the BMA. It didn’t and it hasn’t. That is BBC impartiality.
I was sick of the bBBC always illustrating the strikers with film of women chanting ‘save our NHS’. It’s not their NHS but you can see why they like it … guaranteed highly-paid jobs for life in an organisation arranged around them, with the bBBC telling them that it is the envy of the world … except that no other country liked it enough to copy it.
From the mention news item; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-36391957 I would NOT get the real news that the BMA were only interested in pay and making it a political strike against the gov. If I were a doc I would be ‘more than annoyed ‘ with the BMA. Well that could be the angle for a news items, how doc felt betrayed by the BMA.. Yeah, I was daydreaming.
NHS doctors must be some of the highest paid & cosseted employees in the public sector, yet still they whine that things are unfair. Some people think that when doctors strike the death rate goes down. No profession should expose its uselessness to the public gaze in this way!