In very simple terms, I suppose so.

You enter into a public service job knowing the terms from the outset, and this means that things will change as government's and economic (national and international) change. Would they prefer that cutbacks were made in the medical education to fund their unworkable pensions? The money has to come from somewhere.

On a lighter note, perhaps if they were not such good doctors, we'd not live as long and their pensions would remain in tact

Regardless of your eyes wide open view, personally I think that's a pretty sh-tty view to take toward someone who spent nearly a decade training to perform a vital public service.

Maybe you'd prefer a huge influx of cheap foreign doctors who have apparently been trained to equivalent standards around the world. I mean its not like we've had cases of poorly trained foreign doctors killing people is it?

Low life expectancy post retirement.
Pay freezes for almost 7 years.
Massive cuts to pensions 2 years ago.
Workload increasing with little extra funding for practices.

I wouldn't be a doc for all the money n the world, nothing to do with the above. As I could not cope with dealing will all the pillocks with nothing wrong.

It was a general term (I actually got a nice one last month) but since 2008 we had a 5% cut, 0, 0, 3% and 3%. All below inflation over the period.

I have family who have worked in the NHS for decades, I agree we have a great system that should be looked after. But there are good doctors and bad doctors, yet they all get the same pay and pension throughout. I cannot hand on heart say I know a good GP for instance. But I have recently dealt with Cancer specialist consultants who were quite simply brilliant.

This is purely economics. If your final salary pensions means more to you than what you signed up for and that's caring for people, it's a shame. I always thought of medicine as a vocation, rather than a career.

GPs are well paid but hospital doctors work long hours for not a huge salary. Only consultants can do private work.

This is one of the issues, we renegotiated a few years back and took a big cut without complaining, now they want to change it again. On a side note I'll happily accept the same pension conditions as MP's or senior civil servants. "We're all in this together".

Your first assertion is not backed up by the figures I've seen bandied round the press.

I'm not saying we're worse off than average Joe. But we are not average Joe, we are highly trained and successful people. You do not want Dr Average Joe looking after you. The pay and conditions have to attract quality people.

Quality control is a separate issue. As is why I do the job, which is not money. That doesn't strip me of the right to defend my financial future.

This is the really dangerous possible outcome for everyone concerned. I have enormous sympathy for Sevo but that sentence should scare us all, including him.

(For clarity, I'm a GP and I'm not striking, but I don't condemn my colleagues who do. I believe a better path would be to stop cooperating with any paperwork or data collection instead.)

In the 60's, doctors worked long hours but had some goodwill, somewhere to put their head down between patients on 36 hour shifts and hot meals in return. You worked your arse off but were looked after in return.

In the 80's there was a contract that meant junior doctors earned half their usual hourly rate for overtime, so hospital doctors made people work 120 hours a week because it was cheaper than hiring two doctors for 60 hours a week. No one fed them and although they still had rooms to sleep in, they never saw them. Junior doctors were dropping dead from exhaustion (!) and patients often died because barely conscious exhausted doctors were making terrible decisions after being on their feet for 48 or more hours straight. (The longest shift I've ever worked while shadowing a junior doctor as a med student in 1998 was 52 hours.)

In the 2000's, the contracts were redrawn after another threatened strike based on the quite reasonable concern that doctors were dropping dead and so were patients. But training was cut back on, the rooms to sleep in were charged for and students had to start paying fees that got higher and higher, and are set to rise further. Money for postgraduate training was cut so a lot of doctor's training was paid for out of their own pockets.

GMC fees (essential registration fees that are a requirement of training), Postgraduate Medical and Education Training Boards (quangos that require payments to sign off postgraduate doctors as finishing their training), other bodies who you can't avoid to be trained (such as the Royal College of GP's) all introduced more training but expected the junior doctors earning least to pay for it all. And since student fees have risen, the average medical student leaves univeristy with a medical degree and £30,748 of debt. (Source: BMA survey 2011 )

Post-Harold Shipman, everyone had to fill out vastly more paperwork all the time to prove that they weren't a murdering psychopath. It doesn't benefit patients, gives useless people jobs administering it. The ironic thing about the 21st century cult of "paperwork saving lives" is that Shipman would have sailed through the bloody lot of it. Doctors want to spend time with patients, not filling out 30 forms for a government that only intends to use any statistics for political gain anyway.

Five years ago, doctors accepted pension changes to make them fairer and more sustainable for the future, already agreeing to changes that other unions have ignored for years because they realised it was fairer. Their reward for this foresight is to have their pension payments increased again. They would have been better off if they'd resisted pension changes the last time they were discussed, but they didn't because they're not bds and thought it'd be fairer to pay what they should.

So the point of my lengthy rant? This isn't about pensions. This is about a gradual piling on of st since the 80's. There was an unwritten contract that said that doctors, nurses and other NHS staff worked dilligently for their communities and though they'd never be enormously rich through NHS work, they'd be looked after when they needed it in return. Then looking after staff became less important than the money.

There comes a point when frankly, bright and previously devoted people are fed up of receiving blows and stop giving a st. How do you stop that? Sod the bloody pensions- like I said, I don't believe this really is about pensions.

Solve it by engaging with young doctors (and nurses and other health professionals too). Give them a cup of coffee and a slice of pizza on a night shift. Stop charging for the rooms they sleep in. Support them so they're not crippled by debt when they leave university (which would cost the country less than rigging pensions for doctors and nurses by a long way). Stop monopolies by the Royal Colleges, GMC, hospitals, PMETB (and many other organisations) to charge undergraduates and graduates whatever they like to keep training and keep progressing.

Otherwise more and more doctors will simply "I'm not sure we really care any more." I'm trying hard not to become one of them because if I do, I think that one of the most important bonds between doctors and patients is lost.

Bugger the pension for a moment- Help me and others like me who started to try to look after people to stop becoming disillusioned. A little goodwill, hot food on call, some kind words and some support when you're young and vulnerable as a professional will probably go a lot further than any bloody pension package.

Are you now going to be poor?

Will you have to seriously curtail your lifestyle somewhat?

What things won't you be able to do or afford to do that you couldn't do or afford previously?

Doctors are not poverty striken and they won't be even if they have to retrench somewhat.

I have no sympathy whatsoever with bleating professionals. I'd have far more sympathy for roadsweepers.

(Speaking as a non-bleating professional).

Just for clarity: the hours and pay for consultants are pretty much the same. Please don't let the tabloid press con you into thinking differently. Yes, some GP's earn an awful lot but then so do some plumbers... but not many do.

I reckon I pull a 55 (ish) hour week these days. I'm not exactly on the breadline but I rent a flat in an OK area because I'm finding it difficult to save for a house deposit after paying off £30k of student debt and having to pay for my training as I went.

Don't get me wrong- I think I earn a good wage for what I do and I'm not complaining about my salary at all. But if I earned even half of what the Daily Hate Mail says I do, I'd be getting a house and several new cars tomorrow! Part of the difficulty is that when lies about what GP's earn are quoted as fact then people start to resent my fictitious pay packet.

Or to put it another way (since this is a car website)- much as I love my Octavia vRS, do you really think I'd be driving one of those and renting a flat if I had a six figure salary?