Thursday 15 March 2012

Thatcher's Bloody Britain

Last year, thanks to the spending cuts implemented by the incumbent Tory/Lib Dem coalition government I was made redundant. In the subsequent year I've signed on for a while, put a business together with some former colleagues and done a variety of pieces of work for a number of clients, however business is a little slow and I have some time on my hands. Therefore I applied for work as a 'bank' nurse, in other words a basic grade nurse available for flexible shifts and temporary assignments according to the needs of local NHS establishments. As a qualified mental health nurse of 18 years, with experience of all areas of mental health including high pressure environments (6 years working in a category B prison) I have no qualms about getting down and dirty with some coal-face nursing work, after all that's exactly how I spent the first 14 years of my qualified career.

Imagine my surprise then when, standing in a chip shop waiting for my extraordinarily unhealthy lunch,  I checked my emails and found that I had received the following anonymous response to my application from NHS Professionals:

Thank you for applying to NHS Professionals. It is with regret that I write to inform you that you have been unsuccessful at this stage of the selection process.


There is a palpable feeling of ignominious defeat in being made redundant, a sense that all of your efforts have been for naught. I consider myself extraordinarily lucky that I have a career to fall back on, after all this nation is short of qualified nurses. I have former colleagues that have found themselves applying for jobs two and three full grades below their former position and competing against hundreds of other applicants. I also have a fantastic partner who is also a healthcare professional with a solid job, therefore I am not in the position that many face, in that we remain able to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. In other words I am fully aware that my situation is not dire and that I am very fortunate.

Nevertheless I was livid when I read the above email. The reason for the rejection is unfathomable to me but appears to be yet another example of how bizarre this country is getting. On the radio today is news 5000 frontline police officers gone since the cuts, ambulances from Hull being dispatched to Leeds because of a shortage of 999 response vehicles, and theft, robbery and violence incidents up 11%. The Home Office doesn't recognise these problems of course but then they will shortly no doubt act on a new report commissioned by the FUCKING TORIES that suggests that police entry requirements should be more strict in the same breath as declaring that police constable starting pay should be dropped from around £23k to just above £19k. Come again? £19,000 per year to do the job of a police officer. These people are off their fucking gourds. Who in their right mind would want to deal with all of the horrible shit that coppers have to put up with for less than a computer operator in an NHS Trust, or a call centre? £19,000 per year. Unbelievable. Of course this report has been prepared by an independently wealthy Oxford graduate. Meanwhile our glorious leader is sucking Satan's cock with all the wet-mouthed enthusiasm of Tory Fucking Blair and managing to come off looking like exactly what he is, a frighteningly uncool, anti-hip, toffee-nosed shitbird. Still, he needn't worry, he's well taken care of as are all of his friends. That unbelievable whore-bag that was his employment tsar has stepped down as chair of the business she took £8.2 million from in one year (all of which is public money, that's theft for me), whilst remaining the company's biggest shareholder. The company that is undergoing investigation for several counts of fraud. The company which, despite the fraud probes, has just been granted another £30 million of public money to run education in prisons in London and the South-East.

Meanwhile I, as a qualified nurse of 18 years, can't get shortlisted for a bank nurse job.

Back to Far Cry 2 then.

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