Last week BMA members received a survey from us in the post.  You can also complete it online should you prefer. The deadline is midnight on Monday 16 January, so get a move on!

The survey asks you two big questions:

1. What is your attitude to the latest proposals for changes to the NHS pension scheme?

and,

2. What action would you personally be prepared to take (or support if you are a student) in pursuit of changes to the pension proposals?

We also ask if you are likely to bring forward your retirement/draw your pension early, and for your specialty, age and country of work.

If you haven’t already completed the survey then why not do it now?! It takes less than two minutes and is an opportunity for you as a BMA member to tell your trade union what you want us to do. Remember that my colleagues and myself are not the BMA — you are! So please complete the survey ASAP.

BMA council is meeting to discuss the next steps (which could of course mean industrial action) so I just can’t stress how important it is for all members to complete the survey and let us know exactly what they think. If the BMA were to ballot its members then we would need accurate place of work details, so make sure that yours are up to date.

This week we also launched Pension Tension — our new online interactive tool that shows that ‘something horrible is happening’ to your pensions. You can use it to work out how much more you’ll pay, how much longer you’ll have to work and how much less you’ll get over retirement if the government’s proposals go ahead. It’s a light-hearted way of getting over a very serious message. I wouldn’t exactly claim to be part of the twitterati (I leave that to the BMA pensions committee chair @alanjrobertson who is an expert on such things) but I have read the tweets – many of which are from junior doctors – and the feedback is fantastic.

Completing this survey is one of the most important actions that we have ever asked you to take, so please, please, please, pretty please with sugar on top, complete it now and ask, cajole or beg your colleagues to do so too.

Don’t miss the opportunity to have your say and back us to stand up to the government on this massively important issue.