Junior physicians are threatening to strike again. So what, you might state? When are they not threatening a walk-out? In the past two years, they have actually taken industrial action 11 times.

This makes me truly mad. My medical union, the British Medical Association (BMA), is squandering public respect for doctors, battering truths and pursuing Left-wing crusades without any regard for the expense to the health service.

Their pressing needs for higher pay make my profession, my long-lasting occupation, look tawdry, cynical and money-grubbing. There are moments when I nearly feel I might rip up my membership card in frustration.

But it isn't simply my union that is behaving so disgracefully. The genuine offender is the Labour government, whose ineptitude in union settlements because pertaining to power has actually activated a greedy free-for-all.

Unless these outrageous demands can be brought under control, I fear the NHS might be bankrupted.

The flashpoint this month is the BMA's demand for a pay boost much better than the 4 percent that was implemented on April 1 - a rise the union has dismissed as 'derisory'.

That 4 per cent is currently above the rate of inflation, which is presently performing at 3.5 per cent. In truth, the offer offered to junior medical professionals (or 'resident physicians', as we're now supposed to call them) offers considerably more, as they will receive an extra ₤ 750 on top of the uplift, representing an average boost in income of 5.4 percent.

And it begins top of an enormous 22 percent average increase provided by Health Secretary Wes Streeting last year in a desperate quote to put a stop to the continuous strikes, after they required a 30 per cent pay rise.

Their pressing needs for higher pay make my occupation, my lifelong vocation, look tawdry, negative and money-grubbing, says Dr Max Pemberton

Junior medical professional members of the British Medical Association (BMA) on the picket line outside the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle in 2023

That craven capitulation by Labour didn't work, obviously - just as surrender has actually proved not successful in mollifying the transportation unions, the instructors and every other militant collective. The BMA validates its ongoing push for greater pay by claiming doctors are worse off by about a quarter in genuine terms considering that 2009.

The chairman of the BMA council, Professor Philip Banfield, sneers at the 4 per cent boost, stating it 'takes us in reverse, pressing pay restoration even further into the range,' and includes ominously: 'Nobody wants a go back to scenes of medical professionals on picket lines, however unfortunately this looks much more likely.'

What else did anybody expect? Unions are mandated to demand as much money for their members as they can get. They do not exist to be sensible or to accept compromise. And when Labour shopped them off, the unions sensed weakness. Prof Banfield understands there are more concessions to be won now, more pips to be squeezed.

But the NHS is not some private, profit-making corporation, and this is not a fight in between an exploited workforce and fat feline shareholders. Our beleaguered health service is funded by all of us - and it is on its knees.