Ooh, nurse!

Monday, 30th March 2020 

It’s only when you’re in a pandemic that you can truly appreciate how poorly we are equipped to deal with one. Now that’s alright if you’re Mr and Mrs or Ms or Mx Average and your overriding concern is how are you going to wipe your arse but what if you were a government whose job it is to be ready for medical emergencies on a massive scale?

Well, some things were done to prepare for an outbreak like Covid-19. In October 2016, the government ran an exercise codenamed Exercise Cygnus which examined the country’s response to a flu outbreak with a mortality rate similar to coronavirus. The outcomes of the exercise were a) the discovery that the underfunded, already over-stretched NHS would not be able to cope (who knew?!) and b) the Chief Medical Officer for the UK declared that there wouldn’t be enough ventilators in the event of a pandemic.

So, with that in mind, what did the government do next? I think you can guess. That’s right – fuck all. And, in the same year, the Department of Health ignored ‘expert advice’ (because this was very fashionable at the time) to increase the PPE stockpiles against the specific risk of a worldwide influenza-type epidemic on the grounds that it would be too expensive to stockpile these bits of kit. Hmm…

In June 2017, the newly elected Tory government then voted down a Labour bill calling for a lifting of the pay cap for public sector workers (nurses, doctors, teachers, firefighters etc) as their pay had at first been frozen in 2010 and then, from 2013, been given a paltry 1% increase. You can see their reasons. After all, public sector workers do their jobs for the good of society and not, patently, to get rich. Oh, and a lot of them vote Labour so, you know…

Among the list of Tories who voted against this lifting of the paycap was, of course, Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock, two men now struggling to put enough workers on the frontline against the towering wave that is the pandemic tsunami. And two men who just happen to have contracted Covid-19, one of those influenza-type infections. In another blinding decision, the government scrapped the bursaries available to those applying to be a nurse, despite having a 28,000 shortfall of nurses across the NHS. That’s alright, we can recruit some cheaper nurses from overseas, can’t we?

No, we bloody can’t. Not if we are to remain committed to reducing foreigners coming over here and filling the vacancies so desperately needed by NHS trusts and to that end, from 2017, the government scrapped our previously declared target of recruiting 5,000 nurses from abroad, every year for 15 years. However, they are allowed in if they will be filling a position whereby they will be paid above the £30,000 threshold.

At this point, it’s worth looking at the nurse’s NHS pay scale. In 2018-19 their starting salary was £23,023 but, wait for it, if they stay with the NHS for 7+ years, their pay would rocket to the stratospheric level of £29,608. Ah, so that’s why the property market in Kensington has been flooded with nurses looking for somewhere to invest their excess income by buying a little rental property in London’s most expensive borough. ‘Make way, oil sheikh, Nurse Jackie coming through!’

But back to that magic number at the top of the nurses’ payscale: £29,608. The more maths-y ones of you out there might have spotted the Catch 22, shaped hole in this recruiting policy. Yes, it is impossible to earn the amount necessary that qualifies you to come and work here. For qualified nurses, all the while, Student Loans will be raking back a chunk of this salary out of their monthly pay and the lovely nurses will be working long shifts in underfunded conditions where there aren’t enough beds but there are strict targets to keep everyone on their toes. Or on their knees, depending on how you view government targets.

And then this shitty virus hits the fan and suddenly all the money that wasn’t invested and all the equipment that wasn’t bought and all the advice that was ignored crack the system apart.

I hope the following happens: In an ill-advised attempt to get-down-with-the-people, Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson insist on being treated in an NHS hospital for Covid-19, believing that this will make an excellent photo opportunity. However, once on the ward, or in the corridor, or mop cupboard, or whatever other space is available, they see first-hand the damage they have done. They end up being treated by a nurse wearing medical scrubs sourced from Medfet, the medical fetish site that the NHS recently, desperately, had to beg for their supplies of scrubs. Some of these scrubs come equipped with an enormous strap-on dildo (I think; I haven’t done the research on this one) and I want Boris and Matt to be quivering on their knees as nurse administers some medicine anally, using the giant purple truncheon. Of course, this might bring painful memories of Eton flooding back but c’est la vie!

Then, if either of them snuffs it, I want them to be dealt with by some of the funeral directors’ staff who have had to make their own face masks out of sanitary pads (I'm not making this up). And I want the coffin to be tipped unceremoniously onto some refuse tip on the edge of New Delhi where their eyelids can be nibbled by rats and stray dogs can piss on their puffy pink corpses.

The world has a funny way of self-correcting itself and karma is a cosmic joker.

Latest data for the UK (as of 11pm):

Infected: 20,141

Deaths: 1,408

Celebrity Deaths: 0

People I know who are infected: 2 (my boss, and Sol’s mate)

Song of the Day: ‘Spirit in the Sky’ – Dr and the Medics