‘Only the little people pay taxes,’ New York hotel tycoon Leona Helmsley was once reputed to have said. She later discovered, as she was jailed for tax evasion, that that wasn’t quite true. But her ethos still lives on, in the British Medical Association’s (BMA) campaign for a rise in consultants’ pay.

Consultants now seem to think that they ought to be compensated for the tax increases which are paying their salaries and pensions.

Consultants now seem to think that they ought to be compensated for the tax increases which are paying their salaries and pensions.

This week, consultants voted to strike by a margin of 76 to 24 per cent – albeit on a turnout of just 51 per cent. This gives the union the right to call repeated strikes for the next 12 months. The new health secretary James Murray has complained that it is thoroughly........

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