The Truth About Percentages

So, junior doctors are out on strike again. Cue the usual pearl-clutching headlines: "They want 35% more pay!"

Sounds greedy, doesn’t it? Thirty-five percent. Blimey, you’d think they were bankers or PPE contract grifters. But here’s the thing – percentages are bloody meaningless unless you know what the base number is. If someone earning a tenner an hour gets a 35% rise, they’re still only on £13.50. Whereas if you’re earning £100k, 35% is another £35 grand. Quite a difference.

And that’s exactly the game being played here – waving a big scary percentage around to make the lowest-paid professionals in the NHS look like chancers. So let’s ditch the percentages and talk in pounds per hour, shall we?

A newly qualified doctor – you know, the ones keeping your relatives alive at 3am on a bank holiday weekend – earns about £15.57 an hour if they work their contracted 40 hours. Sounds alright? Well, most of them work 50 to 60 hours, often unpaid. That drags their real hourly rate down to £10–12.

That’s less than a barista at Pret in London, who gets up to £14.15 an hour with bonuses and doesn’t have to diagnose sepsis. Or perform CPR. Or sign death certificates. Or graduate with £100,000 in debt.

Meanwhile, a Tube driver earns about £29 an hour for a 36-hour week. No one’s calling that greedy. Nor should they. It’s skilled work and it keeps the capital moving. But if that’s what we’re paying to sit in a tunnel pressing buttons, how in Christ’s name do we justify £10.38 an hour for a doctor who might literally be holding your kid’s heart in their hand?

The BMA aren’t asking for yachts and caviar. They’re asking to undo the 26% pay cut they’ve endured since 2008. Not a raise – a restoration. Back then, their hourly rate bought them rent and food. Now it buys them overdrafts and despair. And the government’s answer? More lectures. More spin. More “efficiency savings” – which, in English, means “do even more for even less.”

And sure – being a doctor can’t be that hard, right? It’s not even surgery. All you need is a few YouTube videos. There again, when you’re rebuilding a car, you can pause the video, make a cuppa, and carry on the next day. That’s not really on when you’re trying to restart a heart. There’s no "skip ad" button mid-resuscitation.

Here’s what really sticks in the craw – not one major news organisation breaks it down like this. Not one says, “Actually, this isn’t about 35%. It’s about £15 an hour before tax, or £10 when the unpaid hours are added back in.” Because if they did, the public might cotton on that these are the people keeping the NHS afloat, and they’re being treated like disposable interns.

It’s not just insulting. It’s dangerous. Morale’s in the gutter, vacancies are through the roof, and junior doctors are packing their bags for Australia faster than you can say “Better pay, better weather, better beer.”

So the next time someone whines about their “35% demand,” ask them this – what do you pay someone to keep you alive? If your answer is “less than the Pret manager,” you might want to sit down and have a word with yourself.

We can’t run a health service on slogans and spreadsheets. Nor on the backs of exhausted, underpaid doctors who could earn more stacking shelves.

Pay them properly. Or lose them. Then try finding a Pret barista who can do a lumbar puncture.