Who would have thought it? Two years and a bit after junior, sorry, resident, doctors staged strikes in successful pursuit of a mammoth pay rise, NHS consultants have decided they would like a bit of the action. They claim, as they would, that it’s only about restoring the value of pay as it was 17 years ago – 17 years, no doubt, carefully chosen to maximise the claim, otherwise, why not ten years, or even five? In the media, their representatives also refer to lawyers and bankers as equivalent professionals whose pay now substantially exceeds theirs.Not unsurprisingly, the general public response, as per social media, has essentially boiled down to ‘greedy sods’. And it is hard not to agree. With average salaries above £150,000 – plus extra for so-called out of hours work, plus however many hours set aside for private practice, which can multiply that two- or three-fold, as well as gold-plated pensions – NHS consultants are well-off by any national standard. With their strings of qualifications and six-figure student debt, however, the consultants might deserve a more considered response. So here it is.Whenever nurses or paramedics, for instance, have argued that they might warrant pay rises on a par with those of the junior doctors, they are roundly told not to compare different branches of the health service with each other. Well, the same goes for the consultants and the supposed peers they name. To compare their monetary rewards with those of bankers and lawyers is........

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