When the weekly Clap for Carers began last year , I joined a group of neighbours on the doorstep.
I thought of all my friends and relatives working in the NHS and the student nurses I began my own training with in 1982.
I remembered how terrified I’d been starting on the wards and couldn’t imagine what it must be like to do so in the middle of a pandemic.
And my heart went out to the student nurses volunteering to join the Covid front line, amid the scandalous early shortage of PPE.
Then we heard of the first nurses to die after treating patients with coronavirus and became haunted by images of NHS heroes battling on with infinite compassion yet feeling as if they were failing.
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We were so proud of them that we all put rainbows in our windows, politicians sported lapel badges and a 99-year-old war veteran inspired a drive for health service charities.
And when the Prime Minister’s own life was saved by the NHS he personally thanked his two ICU nurses and spoke of the debt he owed them.
Last month it emerged that pandemic nurses have inspired a 32% rise in applications to join the profession – the so called “Nightingale effect”.
But now the famous Lady With the Lamp must be turning in her grave.
Because the Government has snuffed out the little bit of light waiting for nurses at the end of the Covid tunnel… a long-awaited pay rise.
They’ve “rewarded” all the sweat and tears with a pitiful and insulting 1% increase which, with inflation, will probably become a cut.
“It’s the most we think we can afford,” whined Health Minister Nadine Dorries, herself a former nurse.
Well, they’d bloody well better think again and come up with an offer closer to the 12.5% the Royal College of Nursing wants.
I know that other public sector workers are facing a pay freeze but we cannot stand by and see our nurses kicked in the teeth when they are already on their knees.
Health union Unison wants millions to unite and show Boris and his Government what we think of their shocking hypocrisy.
So on Thursday at 8pm I will be back out on my doorstep taking part in a mass SLOW hand clap to protest against this insulting pay award and demand fair wages.
And I urge you all to join me.
