Roger Watson & Niall McCrae
It is a long time since either of us uttered the words ‘I’m proud to be a nurse’. In fact, looking at the current state of the profession, despite both of us being Registered Nurses, if not exactly ashamed to be nurses, we are somewhat embarrassed.
Where do we start? First there was wholesale collusion with the Covid regime with nurses urging us to obey lockdowns and ‘save the NHS’, the shaming and silencing of the few brave colleagues who spoke out, proudly changing their social media profile pictures to one of them wearing a face mask and many retired nurses making a comeback tour in the vaccine rollout. In the early days of the rollout there was perhaps some excuse for participating. But against the rapidly developing background of a virus that we could see was little risk to healthy people, that the vaccines patently did not work and then the accumulating evidence of the harmful and fatal effects of the vaccines, it became inexcusable. The small risk of vaccine harm was emphasised rather than the small risk associated with Covid-19. They wanted it both ways.
Then we were preached to about the dangers of Covid-19 and the stress that nurses were under by notable nurses sitting, unashamedly, in front of empty Nightingale hospitals built in anticipation of massive and fictional levels of infection. The Nightingale hospitals were never used. And we must not forget the Tik-Tok videos whereby nurses and their medical colleagues collectively took the p1$$ out of the population by dancing around in empty hospital wards, almost as if they were enjoying themselves. The Thursday evening clapping and pot-banging (neither of us participated) clearly went to their heads, and they confused genuine support for what was perceived as their vital role in the ‘pandemic’ with carte blanche to behave in a completely unprofessional manner and to do so with impunity.
While many were having to live in reduced circumstances and confined to their homes with some, ultimately, losing their jobs as companies folded and industry ground to a halt, nurses were able to go to work. Many had no contact with Covid-19 patients; in fact, due to the closure of the NHS, many had no contact with any patients, yet they were fully paid throughout.
The outcome of lockdown and closure of the NHS has been a record backlog of cases, increased deaths from undiagnosed and untreated cancers, increased cardiac deaths and waits of several days for an ambulance. The mind boggles at what the state of the NHS would be like if we had not ‘saved’ it. But the nursing profession is remarkably silent on all of this.
One could be forgiven for thinking that nurses would be grateful for our tolerance, be glad that they were able to keep earning (a minimum of £27,000 for newly qualified nurses and an average of £37,000 only slightly below the national average of £39,000) and given our straitened circumstances nationally, albeit small, the proposed 4% pay rise would be acceptable. But no, they want 15% and are prepared to strike to obtain it.
This must be the most ill-judged and ill-timed proposal to strike by any sector of the British workforce and it must be called out for what it is. It is selfish, ungrateful and also dangerous. There are many examples of nurses receiving gifts from companies, some of considerable value, during the Covid regime, possibly in contravention of their professional code of conduct which forbids all but the most trivial gifts of low monetary value. Rather than going on strike, we suggest that a better gesture would be to donate those gifts to charities and food banks.
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