Student Politics

Well, that didn't take long. Less than three weeks after respectfully gushing her constructive admiration all over junior doctors, the Minister for Profitable Healthcare has resumed the Steve Baker (or Barclay) tactic of matching derisory pay offers with dismissive language. During a radio interview she proclaimed that she prefers to call them "doctors in training," and the increasingly non-Conservative ability to distinguish a preference from a fact appears unlikely to mitigate the offence. Junior doctors are fully qualified and may have up to a decade's experience; but they comprise nearly half of the doctors in the hated NHS, which doubtless explains why the Minister for Profitable Heathcare prefers to down-label them. In a further access of civility, the Minister claimed that the Government does have more money available than is currently being offered, but chooses to let patients endure a winter strike rather than bring it to the negotiating table. Presumably the thinking, if thinking is quite the word, is that anyone likely to die from an NHS winter crisis would be a fairly unlikely Party donor.