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[Buce]

Nurses know exactly why Boris Johnson’s nurse quit – we are running on empty

Jenny McGee’s resignation makes it clear how shoddily we have been treated by this government

 

I’ve never treated anybody famous. But then, as a nurse, you treat everybody the same – without fear or favour.

Jenny McGee might have looked after Boris Johnson when he was gravely ill with Covid-19, but that’s the only difference I can see between her and nearly every nurse I know. Do your job, give your all, come back again tomorrow. Until you can’t.

 

The past 14 months have seen highs and lows – personally and professionally – that nobody could have prepared for. But perhaps the greatest surprise of all came one full year into the pandemic.

fter so many rounds of applause, the warmest of words and the highest of accolades, McGee’s famous patient showed it had all been hollow. A decade of real-terms pay cuts – worth thousands of pounds – are to be followed by yet another.

We’d been lulled into believing that, at long last, we were going to get the full recognition our work deserves. The derisory 1% pay rise the government offered nurses in March shows how wrong we were. McGee has now quit her job over the government’s poor treatment of healthcare workers.

Working as a nurse requires a certain sense of humour but not a single nurse or NHS worker I know had anything but personal anguish and professional despair on display that day.

We are graduates. We run clinics and services. We are the difference between life and death.

But many nurses and care workers are now leaving their jobs. Why? McGee has pulled back the curtain on behalf of so many of us.

When you see the difference you make to the lives of countless individuals and their families, the reward is immense. But I cannot spend that at the supermarket. And the memory of that feeling is harder to hold on to when each understaffed shift feels more brutal than the last.

In January last year, we could see a crisis brewing with coronavirus. We had been watching what was happening in China, and then Italy, and we were concerned about what was coming our way.

Some of us were used to working in intensive care but even those who had worked with a ward full of patients needing critical care weren’t prepared for the wave that hit us. We pulled together as a team. People were redeployed from other areas and we did everything we could for each of our patients. But where was the PPE to keep us safe?

My colleagues started to fall ill, and one even lost their life to the virus. When your colleague becomes your patient, everybody fears they could be next.

How does it feel now? Thankfully, the wards are starting to empty and the figures are improving. But we are running on empty. A debt of gratitude is owed, not just to nursing colleagues but to so many in healthcare and other key workers.

The prime minister seems to have fundamentally misunderstood what has happened over the past year. Giving NHS staff a proper pay rise isn’t a luxury but a necessity. It wouldn’t stop all those intent on leaving – but I guarantee that, with the flick of a Treasury pen, nurses like me would feel infinitely more valued. After a day on your feet, there isn’t much that puts a spring in your step, but a decent pay rise would make all the difference.

My night shift starts in a few hours. By the time the politicians nod off, I’ll be keeping the lights on with thousands of others around the country. When the crisis arrived, we more than rose to the challenge. The eyes of healthcare workers are on the government now. It is your turn.

• The author is a nurse working at a NHS hospital trust in the north-west of England

[oxford blue]

34 minutes ago, Buce said:

Giving NHS staff a proper pay rise isn’t a luxury but a necessity. It wouldn’t stop all those intent on leaving – but I guarantee that, with the flick of a Treasury pen, nurses like me would feel infinitely more valued. After a day on your feet, there isn’t much that puts a spring in your step, but a decent pay rise would make all the difference.

Without quoting all of the previous post, I think that a one-off ex-gratia payment for front line NHS staff should have been made( and would show the debt of gratitude which the nurse says is missing). It would have demonstrated the effort and dedication - for which we all recognise, as demonstrated by the 10 weeks of clapping- shown by staff over the past year or so. This would have had the advantage of rewarding the staff who have shown exceptional dedication to help their patients, without other public sector employees thinking that if nurses/NHS staff have received an above inflation pay rise, they are due similar to maintain 'differentials'. 

 

[nnfox]

1 hour ago, oxford blue said:

Without quoting all of the previous post, I think that a one-off ex-gratia payment for front line NHS staff should have been made( and would show the debt of gratitude which the nurse says is missing). It would have demonstrated the effort and dedication - for which we all recognise, as demonstrated by the 10 weeks of clapping- shown by staff over the past year or so. This would have had the advantage of rewarding the staff who have shown exceptional dedication to help their patients, without other public sector employees thinking that if nurses/NHS staff have received an above inflation pay rise, they are due similar to maintain 'differentials'. 

 

Exactly this.  Nobody would begrudge that and it would be much more affordable way of doing it.

 

 

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57205015

 

A very interesting look at the fuzz in the US in the aftermath of Floyd and Brown, not to mention others.

[CosbehFox]

Sunday Times Rich List confirms a 24% rise in UK billionaires....while Marcus Rashford worth £16m tops the giving list - raising 125% of his actual worth for good causes. 

[Innovindil]

Animal Rebellion wants McDonald's to commit to becoming fully plant-based by 2025.

 

 

No wonder they are dressed like clowns. 

[Bellend Sebastian]

Priti Patel was a guest at Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall's wedding? Of course she was.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/22/daniel-morgans-son-says-priti-patel-has-added-to-familys-agony

 

Just when you think it can't get anymore vomit inducing than Tony Blair chumming up to Murdoch, although at least that did have a vaguely entertaining ending when old Skeletor accused him of shagging his (previous) wife

 

 

[Buce]

2 hours ago, Innovindil said:

Animal Rebellion wants McDonald's to commit to becoming fully plant-based by 2025.

 

 

No wonder they are dressed like clowns. 

 

Yeah, because caring about the future of the planet, and by extension everybody they love and care about, is just one big joke isn't it?

Edited 22 May 2021 by Buce

[Innovindil]

31 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Yeah, because caring about the future of the planet, and by extension everybody they love and care about, is just one big joke isn't it?

No, because disrupting the biggest fast food chain in the world, which has ALREADY agreed to trial plant-based alternatives, makes you a clown.

 

Literally hurting a company that is not only trying to be on your side, but has the global influence that if they take a stance, every other fast food business will follow, or at least consider following.

 

Trouble is, caring about something is somehow equating to be able to act stupid, even against your end goal, and get support. 

[Buce]

1 hour ago, Innovindil said:

No, because disrupting the biggest fast food chain in the world, which has ALREADY agreed to trial plant-based alternatives, makes you a clown.

 

Literally hurting a company that is not only trying to be on your side, but has the global influence that if they take a stance, every other fast food business will follow, or at least consider following.

 

Trouble is, caring about something is somehow equating to be able to act stupid, even against your end goal, and get support. 

 

If you seriously think that McDonalds trialling plant-based meals is about anything other than widening their appeal to a greater customer base, then you're a bigger clown than any of them.

[Innovindil]

1 minute ago, Buce said:

 

If you seriously think that McDonalds trialling plant-based meals is about anything other than widening their appeal to a greater customer base, then you're a bigger clown than any of them.

Yeah I guess it's like switching to paper straws, because that's exactly what the customers wanted.

 

McDonalds will cater to what it's customers want, if 90% of them want plant-based, they'll give it to them. How you can blame a popular chain for supplying what the customers want is beyond me.

[Buce]

3 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

Yeah I guess it's like switching to paper straws, because that's exactly what the customers wanted.

 

McDonalds will cater to what it's customers want, if 90% of them want plant-based, they'll give it to them. How you can blame a popular chain for supplying what the customers want is beyond me.

 

Switching to paper straws was a win-win; they would only gain customers from it. Switching to solely plant-based burgers would cost them more customers than it would attract - it's not rocket science.

 

Making up statistics doesn't really help your argument.

[Innovindil]

2 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Switching to paper straws was a win-win; they would only gain customers from it. Switching to solely plant-based burgers would cost them more customers than it would attract - it's not rocket science.

 

Making up statistics doesn't really help your argument.

You clearly didn't pay attention after the roll out then, you must have missed the thousands of complaints about them, or the petition that managed to get some tens of thousands of signatures saying bring back the plastic straws. So unless you can post customer numbers increasing after the roll out, I guess you're the one making up statistics.

 

What's not rocket science is McDonalds are a service. They generally offer what customers want, the same way supermarkets do. The same way they offer a different menu in asian countries, or the US, or the UK, depending on their customer base in those areas. The same way supermarkets are offering plant-based products, which are slowly being taken up by more and more people. What a global company isn't going to do is swap all of their products over to something the customers don't want, that's what makes these handful of clown dressed idiots actual clowns.

 

If you want a plant-based world, come up with a way of making it not taste like shite. Or better yet, come up with a way of farming animal proteins without the negative environmental effects. 

[Carl the Llama]

8 hours ago, Innovindil said:

Animal Rebellion wants McDonald's to commit to becoming fully plant-based by 2025.

 

 

No wonder they are dressed like clowns. 

I believe the clown garb is a reference to popular fast food mascot Ronald McDonald.  I'm surprised that one made it past you.

 

2 hours ago, Innovindil said:

You clearly didn't pay attention after the roll out then, you must have missed the thousands of complaints about them, or the petition that managed to get some tens of thousands of signatures saying bring back the plastic straws. So unless you can post customer numbers increasing after the roll out, I guess you're the one making up statistics.

 

What's not rocket science is McDonalds are a service. They generally offer what customers want, the same way supermarkets do. The same way they offer a different menu in asian countries, or the US, or the UK, depending on their customer base in those areas. The same way supermarkets are offering plant-based products, which are slowly being taken up by more and more people. What a global company isn't going to do is swap all of their products over to something the customers don't want, that's what makes these handful of clown dressed idiots actual clowns.

 

If you want a plant-based world, come up with a way of making it not taste like shite. Or better yet, come up with a way of farming animal proteins without the negative environmental effects. 

Your first 2 paragraphs contradict each other.  For instance you say 

Quote

What a global company isn't going to do is swap all of their products over to something the customers don't want, that's what makes these handful of clown dressed idiots actual clowns

having literally just made a point of contention about them doing exactly that with the straws.  So which is it, are they a benevolent company which makes ethical decisions regardless of their customers' opinions or are they a consumer-driven capitalist machine that changes colour with the breeze that they think will make them the most money?  You can't really believe that there weren't a million focus groups saying people want environmentally friendly straws before the straw roll-out, can you?

[Innovindil]

31 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

I believe the clown garb is a reference to popular fast food mascot Ronald McDonald.  I'm surprised that one made it past you.

 

Your first 2 paragraphs contradict each other.  For instance you say 

having literally just made a point of contention about them doing exactly that with the straws.  So which is it, are they a benevolent company which makes ethical decisions regardless of their customers' opinions or are they a consumer-driven capitalist machine that changes colour with the breeze that they think will make them the most money?  You can't really believe that there weren't a million focus groups saying people want environmentally friendly straws before the straw roll-out, can you?

I see the word "generally" managed to evade your eagle eyed attention. Maybe reread what I've wrote with that in mind.

 

You are literally trying to compare straws to fundamentally changing what the business offers. The answer is, like always, somewhere in the middle. The company can be a consumer-driven capitalist machine and a company that makes eithical decisions.

 

Oh and I doubt McDonalds has access to a million focus groups, that seems rather excessive. 

[Carl the Llama]

9 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

I see the word "generally" managed to evade your eagle eyed attention. Maybe reread what I've wrote with that in mind.

 

You are literally trying to compare straws to fundamentally changing what the business offers. The answer is, like always, somewhere in the middle. The company can be a consumer-driven capitalist machine and a company that makes eithical decisions.

 

Oh and I doubt McDonalds has access to a million focus groups, that seems rather excessive. 

It can and it is but you miss my point:  You paint the straw change as some bizarre virtue signal from out of the blue which their customers don't even want.  In reality the fast food industry's contribution to plastic fast food waste had been becoming more and more of a hot button topic for years leading up to this point.  They will have done their own due diligence to make sure that it wouldn't kill their business before committing to a change like that, it's not something they'll have done just because they thought it was the right thing, society was pushing for it. It's what research showed customers want, even if a few oddballs out there think having a more solid straw for the few minutes before it ends up at the side of a motorway is worth raising a petition to return to the old ways that are killing the ocean.  It was the result of consumer-driven capitalism.

 

As for why that's relevant to the straws issue (which you brought into the conversation btw, bit weird to act like it's not relevant when you were the first person to think of it while talking about this): If plant-based or lab-grown meats become a genuinely comparable and cost-effective alternative to the currently popular mystery meat then I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar social pressure rise as happened with the straws issue, it might even be stronger given the abhorrent nature of the factory farms used to generate aforementioned mystery meat.  

As you pointed out yourself the new straws upset a few people.  When they go to McDonalds they expect certain things and to them the plastic straws are a fundamental part of what the business used to offer them.  Yet society has changed around those people and the tens of thousands that signed a petition somewhere are now in the minority, out-pandered-to by the millions who think paper straws are an acceptable sacrifice for a better ecosystem.  Who's to say that with sufficient scientific advancements (which are looking increasingly likely), similar things can't happen to the majority opinion surrounding the grey stuff in the middle of your sandwich?

 

[Innovindil]

3 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

It can and it is but you miss my point:  You paint the straw change as some bizarre virtue signal from out of the blue which their customers don't even want.  In reality the fast food industry's contribution to plastic fast food waste had been becoming more and more of a hot button topic for years leading up to this point.  They will have done their own due diligence to make sure that it wouldn't kill their business before committing to a change like that, it's not something they'll have done just because they thought it was the right thing, society was pushing for it. It's what research showed customers want, even if a few oddballs out there think having a more solid straw for the few minutes before it ends up at the side of a motorway is worth raising a petition to return to the old ways that are killing the ocean.  It was the result of consumer-driven capitalism.

 

As for why that's relevant to the straws issue (which you brought into the conversation btw, bit weird to act like it's not relevant when you were the first person to think of it while talking about this): If plant-based or lab-grown meats become a genuinely comparable and cost-effective alternative to the currently popular mystery meat then I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar social pressure rise as happened with the straws issue, it might even be stronger given the abhorrent nature of the factory farms used to generate aforementioned mystery meat.  

As you pointed out yourself the new straws upset a few people.  When they go to McDonalds they expect certain things and to them the plastic straws are a fundamental part of what the business used to offer them.  Yet society has changed around those people and the tens of thousands that signed a petition somewhere are now in the minority, out-pandered-to by the millions who think paper straws are an acceptable sacrifice for a better ecosystem.  Who's to say that with sufficient scientific advancements (which are looking increasingly likely), similar things can't happen to the majority opinion surrounding the grey stuff in the middle of your sandwich?

 

 

4 hours ago, Innovindil said:

If you want a plant-based world, come up with a way of making it not taste like shite. Or better yet, come up with a way of farming animal proteins without the negative environmental effects. 

Pretty much exactly what I've been trying to say. Make it not taste like shite and people will want it, THEN, you offer it to customers.

 

You don't commit your multi-billion quid company to a set date, like what these clowns are suggesting, without having any idea if it will be viable or wanted.

 

Their commitment, and investment, into trying this should be enough for the clowns. 

[Carl the Llama]

1 minute ago, Innovindil said:

 

Pretty much exactly what I've been trying to say. Make it not taste like shite and people will want it, THEN, you offer it to customers.

 

You don't commit your multi-billion quid company to a set date, like what these clowns are suggesting, without having any idea if it will be viable or wanted.

 

Their commitment, and investment, into trying this should be enough for the clowns. 

So you agree with their principles, you're just upset that they're protesting?

[Innovindil]

Just now, Carl the Llama said:

So you agree with their principles, you're just upset that they're protesting?

Yes, I'm upset they seem to be targeting a company that is at least trying to be on their side, and has the global influence, and income to make a real difference.

 

It baffles me.

[urban.spaceman]

This is ****ing awful 

 

 

 

[Izzy]

Poor souls. I'm scared of heights and I hate cable cars. Absolutely tragic.

Italy cable car fall: 14 dead after accident near Lake Maggiore

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57219737

 

 

[bovril]

6 minutes ago, Izzy said:

Poor souls. I'm scared of heights and I hate cable cars. Absolutely tragic.

Italy cable car fall: 14 dead after accident near Lake Maggiore

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57219737

 

 

Italian cable cars are cursed. I used to take them a lot when I lived in N. Italy and they always scared the shit out of me. 

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57224452

 

Lukashenko flexing his dictator muscles in rather spectacular fashion here.

 

Edit: Dare I say the response might have been a bit more forceful if some place like, say, Iran had done something similar?

Edited 24 May 2021 by leicsmac

[SpacedX]

3 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57224452

 

Lukashenko flexing his dictator muscles in rather spectacular fashion here.

 

Edit: Dare I say the response might have been a bit more forceful if some place like, say, Iran had done something similar?

At least when the passengers finally landed in Vilnius on this occasion they wouldn't have been subjected to this...

 

 

[ClaphamFox]

11 hours ago, urban.spaceman said:

This is ****ing awful 

 

 

 

Inevitably given her profile there is a lot of speculation about this on social media etc, but Trident is investigating the crime, which implies it may have been a local incident rather than the act of a politically-motivated outsider.