‘Orwellian’ medics try to bury MoS exposé... to fury of other doctors

TOUCHY junior doctors tried to stop patients reading last week’s Mail on Sunday exposé of their ‘dirty tricks’ campaign – only to be accused of Orwellian tactics.

At least two bought up copies of the newspaper to prevent patients reading how the British Medical Association was planning to start industrial action with ‘emergency only cover’ as a PR exercise to ‘soften the blow from the media against a full walkout’.

One, calling himself Gasman Jim, posted a picture online of about a dozen copies in his car boot and wrote: ‘The inpatients at my hospital won’t be having their brains damaged this Sunday! #cerebral protection. Every copy from the hospital shop safely locked in my car and will be burnt later.’

But the actions of the medic, from Wrexham, North Wales, drew a withering response from others on the junior doctors’ Facebook forum.

One said he was acting like the ‘medical police’, adding: ‘Your actions have no place in a free society. You should be debating/ expressing your ideas in a public forum not depriving patients of a free press, something intrinsic to their own liberty.’ Referring to George Orwell’s novel, a second commented: ‘You have took [sic] it upon yourself to decide what your sick, vulnerable patients should be reading. All a bit 1984…’

Another writing as Fran O’Neill posted a similar image online, pictured above, with the caption: ‘They won’t be reading it in parts of South Manchester today.’ But Mubeen Iqbal replied: ‘It’s going to come across underhanded, unprofessional and petty.’

Meanwhile, links have emerged between the BMA and the RMT union. Dr Yannis Gourtsoyannis, a Marxist sympathiser and a member of the BMA team planning strike action, circulated a statement of ‘solidarity’ from the RMT to junior doctors for ‘the struggles you are now fighting against austerity-driven attempts by a Tory administration’.