According to payscale.com the average take-home salary for a General Practitioner or GP is just under £50,000 a year. Some specific roles are less well paid - for example, a cardiologist earns about £30,000, but this could also have something to do with the hours worked. GPs often work long hours. A plastic surgeon has the highest annual salary at just over £70,000.

UK doctors are famously the best paid in Europe, with GPs now earning over £100,000 a year gross. However, they don't get any special tax arrangements, pay large pension contributions and their take-home pay is much less. All the same, as their pay was massively increased several years ago, together with a cut in hours, many people feel that they can't expect this to continue in hard times. The industrial action that is planned for later this month does have a lot of support - doctors are respected and it's expected that they should be well rewarded - but it's also attracting some anger as they are, generally, very well off.