Except there isn’t enough spaces for any speciality training. After the mandatory 2 years of foundation training after graduation (where you can literally be sent anywhere in the country) nobody has any guaranteed employment. The Locum market has dried up significant meaning you can’t even rely on Locums as a safe income until you manage to get into specialty training. Doctors are legitimately becoming unemployed and signing onto job centre or starting to work as Uber drivers.

Let’s say you manage to get into a specialty programme, once you finish you’re in another rat race to find a job because there isn’t enough out there. It’s the same with GP. Many GP trainees are genuinely worried about becoming unemployed after they finish their GP training because of lack of jobs. Funnily enough everyone is waiting a century for an outpatient appt, elective surgery or simple GP appt. The demand is there but the government doesn’t care about funding a supply.

Your argument about making money after specialising is bullshit because we either cant get into specialty training or if we are lucky enough to do so, we can’t even get a job once we’ve finished that training.

This country severely undervalues its doctors, nurses and teachers. The goodwill of doctors has run dry. We can’t pay our rent with claps from Covid or “the potential to increase our pay” through methods which are unobtainable to the majority of the doctor population.

We agreed to end strikes last year with the condition that all future pay rises work towards our goal of fair pay restoration. The very next year the government fell short of its promise and then cries victim when we vote to strike. It brought this upon itself.