STRIKING OUT OUR VIEW

AT the time of writing, up to 60,000 junior doctors across the UK are striking for four days, delaying everything from routine appointments to vital cancer treatment.

Despite the obvious risks to health however, one poll found that 74 per cent of the British public supported the strike. Which begs the question, just how broken is the NHS that we support lives being put in danger ­ by the very people who have taken an oath to do no harm ­ to fix it?

It had always generally been accepted that doctors (particularly at the junior end) are overworked and underpaid. But the heavy weight that the pandemic put on those at the front line coupled with the resulting treatment backlog and a cost of living crisis seem to have equalled a work environment for doctors that we can no longer accept.

Where did it all go so wrong though? Launched an astonishing 75 years ago, the NHS brought universal health care to a population who, until then, may simply have died from a simple infection or injury because they could not afford to be treated.

The envy of the world for many years, the NHS also inspired many other great nations to roll out their own equivalents. We now regard free healthcare as one of the main marks of a civilised country.

Like anything though, a great concept only stays great if it moves with the times. And it’s fair to say that relying on a habitually underpaid, overworked workforce to simply put up and shut up forever is not a long term strategy.

Equally, with an ever growing population how long can we expect the NHS to roll on for without massive change before more wheels start to come off?

Norajohnson Breakingviews

LIKE an essential riposte to the continu‐ing waves of appalling global events, crime novels have seen a sales boom, a trend unforeseen even by hard ‐ bitten crime fiction detectives. Anxious about volatility in the real world, readers now seek reassurance in stories where bad ‐dies get their just deserts.

People face many challenges in life and crime fiction lets readers forget their own struggles. They like a ‘formula’. There’s a death. A detective investigates. The per‐petrator is unmasked in a plot involving cunning clues, red herrings and final jus‐tice. No mystery at all!

One challenge one family recently faced was the tragic disappearance and death of Nicola Bulley. Coincidentally, my just‐published thriller ‘The Couple across the Street’ begins with the disappearance in a river of a woman, Michelle. But that’s where the similarities ‐ spoiler alert ‐ end!

This novel was started a year ago be‐fore any hint of Nicola Bulley’s fate (my books take a year from research, first draft through to final version and publica‐tion). And the situation it depicts doesn’t