Doctors would kill your old mum for a pay rise. It's time for an Australia-style switch-up - Kelvin MacKenzie

Sweet words and pleas to their better nature will not stop hospital doctors from being prepared to literally kill your mother to increase their money.

So, this is what we must do. No matter what the price is, and that includes your own family’s personal health, we must stand up to these train drivers with stethoscopes. This time, they cannot win.

And if that means if they all bugger off to Australia and New Zealand so much the better. If it means the death toll in our nation rises, so be it. They must be seen to be defeated. They cannot use the BMA’s stranglehold over health provision in our country against the very people who are paying for it. It’s as simple as that.

When that idiot Starmer came to power last summer, he decided the way to end six months of strikes under the Tory government by the BMA was to hand them a 22 per cent rise.

They weren’t worth it, but if somebody has life and death in their hands, what are you going to do? After all, we had never seen doctors act in that way before.

Over the decade, different unions have used their strength to gain unreasonable pay increases. I worked in the newspaper business in the 80s when the printers (a vile mob) were in the same position. It was a minute-to-minute business, and the weak-kneed management thought it cheaper to buy them off rather than have long disputes.

Finally, a Murdoch emerged, and they were done for.

The miners were in the same position. They controlled our lighting, heating, and industries; if they said jump, successive governments said how high. Then along came Thatcher.

In both industries (and the dockers before them), we paid the blackmailers. Finally, we got off the floor and took them on. Both were roundly defeated in the end.

That must be our attitude towards the hospital doctors. If we have to beg doctors to come out of retirement, arrange for pharmacists to do their best under the tutelage of consultants, turn nurses into doctors overnight, then that’s what we must do. We must tough these people out.

They say they are striking in order to put themselves back into the same financial position as 2008. All of us are worse since that crash. The difference is that they have the power, we don’t.

Having said that, we do possess one power. The money. They are state employees, and therefore, the cash is coming out of our taxes. I don’t want the doctors to receive a penny more than the current 5.4 per cent offer – damned generous compared with any private industry settlement.

There is another, more dramatic solution. We scrap the NHS and basically turn health into a private insurance-based system. At the moment, there is one employer (the NHS) and there is one doctor union dealing with them (the BMA).

And look where it’s got us. Blood awful system. A lazy and unproductive workforce with literally millions of patients on the waiting list. And a never-ending demand for more of our money.

Firstly, doctors should not be allowed to strike. That is the first legislation I would pass. The only reason they are allowed to is because nobody thought that people on £100,000 a year would ever dream of withdrawing their labour.

Let’s replace it with a mixture of the Australian-Irish system. The under 18s, the old and the skint will be treated free while everybody else has to pay.

I think in Ireland it costs £50 to see your GP, and the result with the result that there are a lot fewer patients and the doctors show much more interest. The doctors are happier as they earn more money for less work, and the patients get a better reception. Drinks all round.

There can be no surrender to these ghouls. We haven’t the money, and if we had it wouldn’t go to people on average earnings of £75,000-£100,000.

I look forward to the humiliation of these bullies.