Are You Prepared For Walkout Wednesday?

It's another major day of strikes tomorrow, as junior doctors join teachers and Tube staff on the picket line for Budget Day. Katie Strick offers an essential cheatsheet

- Katie Strick

IF YOU were planning to take the kids to cheer on the junior doctors tomorrow, you might want to dust off the bikes. In case the school and doctor strikes weren’t enough to be getting your head around this week, Wednesday will also see the entire Tube network grind to a halt. Oh, and university staff and civil servants will be back on picket lines around the capital to add to the chaos.

What’s notable about this particular Walkout Wednesday is that it coincides with Budget Day. So far, the Government has stuck to its line that the current economic crisis means it doesn’t have the money to meet public-sector workers’ demands, but union leaders are standing firm, deliberately co-ordinating their plans for industrial action to cause maximum disruption.

You’ll do well to miss the madness: unions including the National Education Union are planning a “carnival”-style march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, and more than 133,000 civil servants are set to walk out alongside teachers, doctors and university workers. Even local BBC staff are joining in — not over the Gary Lineker row (though many are furious about that, too) but over plans to merge some local radio shows. Here’s your cheatsheet.

Junior doctors It’s official: junior doctors can now earn more serving coffee in Pret than saving patients’ lives. This is the shocking statistic that’s been doing the rounds on social media in recent days, as junior medics begin their first-ever walkout and what could be the worst strike in NHS history.