A massive leak of private WhatsApp messages reveals pay was “the only real red line” for the BMA junior doctors leadership. Despite the BMA publicly claiming the strike was about patient safety, senior BMA junior doctor committee member Kitty Mohan admitted:
“It [pay] is the only real red line. It’s the thing 99 per cent of juniors told us they were upset about in August.”
The secret messages show the BMA leadership wanted to “draw this [dispute] right out” and use industrial action to tie up “the DH up in knots for the next 16-18 months”. Committee chair Dr Johann Malawana said drawing out the dispute was the “best solution… to impose [the contract] against our support”. Dr Malawana said he “had nothing to talk about” with the Department for Health, despite the BMA publicly calling the government to the table. He also said:
“I don’t care about anything apart from extracting the best contract. Don’t give a shit about anything else.”
Guido told you so…
Read the bombshell messages in full on HSJ
Last week Guido revealed that the poster boy of the junior doctors had claimed Tory MPs should “all be shot”. Dr Usman Ahmed wrote that he has “always hated the Conservatives” and that Tory MPs should be “given hell”. Well Dr Ahmed’s rant has not gone unnoticed, with local MP Karen Lumley writing to the Worcestershire NHS Trust and the Chief Constable of West Mercia Police expressing her concerns. Lumley says that as a registered outpatient she fears for her safety if Dr Ahmed is on duty:
“I am extremely concerned about this sort of behaviour which is of course totally unacceptable and hope that you and the rest of the Trust would not tolerate it. As I myself am a registered outpatient at the Alexandra Hospital, if this information is accurate and he was on duty when I arrived for an appointment, I could not have any confidence that my safety or well being were assured”.
Guido understands that following the letter West Mercia police have now launched an investigation into Dr Ahmed. The Worcestershire NHS Trust has said it is also investigating his behaviour. A very silly thing for Dr Ahmed to put on his Facebook page…
UPDATE: Dr Ahmed has now apologised on Facebook “I wish to apologise unreservedly for a foolish remark made in the heat of the moment; both for the upset it caused and also for it detracting from the real issues of concern of an unsafe contract for millions of patients and their doctors. Once again my sincerest apologies.”
A Warwick junior doctor has gone full Clarkson and proclaimed that Tory MPs “should all be shot”. Usman Ahmed is a trainee orthopaedic surgeon who has been one of the poster boys for the strikes on the BBC. You can watch him being measured and reasonable on the telly here. Yet his tone on Facebook is a little more punchy, like this post sharing a Jeremy Corbyn video:
Don’t forget your Hippocratic oath, Usman!
