The junior doctors’ strike enters its second day today with a warning from London’s chief nurse Jane Clegg that its impact on patients will be felt for many weeks afterwards, at the same time as more positive signs that this could be the medics’ last walkout.
Ms Clegg says the combined effect of the earlier industrial action and the current strike — which is the longest in NHS history and which has already led to the cancellation of about one million appointments and operations nationwide — is “taking a toll” on patients and making people wait “too long” for treatment as hospitals struggle to reschedule.
Her admission is unsurprising and drives home the unhappy consequences of the doctors’ militancy at a time when the NHS is already under pressure from long waiting lists and the familiar winter surge in demand for its services.
An end to the strike is needed, so it’s welcome to finally hear indications from their leaders that the junior doctors — who want an unrealistic 35 per cent — could be willing to accept less, or at least staggered increases over several years, and return to work. They should do so. Patients are suffering unnecessarily and this strike should be the last.
Clouds lift in the City
The chief executive of the high street retailer Next, Lord Wolfson, has used the announcement today of an impressive 5.7 per cent rise in pre-Christmas sales to make an encouraging prediction that prices in his chain’s shops will remain static this year, mainly because of falling factory prices.
The businessman, who is regarded as one of the wisest in the City, also believes that many consumers will find their wages rising faster than inflation to ease the cost-of-living pressures faced by the public over the past 18 months.
It’s an uplifting assessment that follows buoyant supermarket sales figures and the unveiling of a wave of new, lower fixed rate mortgage deals that will reduce homebuyers’ costs. Challenges remain, but the wave of good news suggests that the economic clouds could finally be lifting and that Londoners can have much to look forward to this year.
A flattering similarity?
Being a political cartoonist is a solitary job. So when one cartoonist’s ideas are used later by another, it can either be a case of an accident — great minds think alike, or, being generous, imitation as the sincerest form of flattery. In the age of social media, when everyone sees everything, the latter seems more and more likely.
