Little Britain and how it sees people
I was going to write about Boris Johnson. You know the stuff. Did he really have the virus? Is he dead? If he's not, where is he really? Did he have a nervous breakdown and go into hiding? Will he resign any time now? If he does, what batshit crazy right wing prime minister will the Tories foist on the UK in his place?
And then, the ultimate question: do we care?
I will admit I've been waiting for a while now for the coronavirus to kill off some major celeb. I thought it might shock people (not in Scotland) to behave better. A few minor celebs have died - and I was really sorry to hear we'd lost Tim Brooke Taylor - but I was quite surprised when Prince Philip suddenly issued a statement last week. I don't remember what it was about but you can google it. For weeks now, several friends and I have been convinced he had snuffed it and the UK government was saving the funeral for a huge UK re-opening celebration.
If you're a royalist and decide to stop reading right here, all I can say is goodbye, because I don't care about the royal family - in fact, I think her majesty's Covid-19 speech to the nation will go down as one of the most embarrassing events of our time.
But my subject today isn't any of the folk above. And that's for a very simple reason: we've discovered politicians, royalty and celebrities don't matter a damn in a pandemic. Most of the essential workers who really do matter are nurses, doctors, hospital care assistants, care workers, pharmacists in hospitals and shops, physios, radiologists and radiographers, phlebotomists, ambulance drivers, cleaners and catering staff.
Just one small fact: if we don't have cleaners, basically we're all gubbed. In Scotland, hospital cleaning staff work for the NHS. Their work is not privatised - although it was at one time and those of us working in and being cared for in hospitals saw the damage.
Then there's check-out staff in supermarkets, the folk who stack the shelves overnight, their managers who were in my opinion dumped right in it by the Tories and left to deal with panic-buying and introduce 'social isolation', without guidance from Westminster politicians. Politicians keep away from problem areas - and probably don't even shop in supermarkets because they have 'staff'. And I'm not forgetting the people in the warehouses who distribute our supplies and the lorry drivers who bring the food to our shops, and the farmers who raise the meat we eat and grow the veg we need. Not to mention the fishmongers trying to keep the fishing industry alive and the posties and the couriers who have basically kept us going for 5 weeks since life shut down.
I would even squeeze in a wee bit of praise for the teachers who have kept classes going for the children of essential workers. And emergency social workers who have stayed on duty looking after the poor, the mentally ill and the elderly.
And that doesn't even cover the workers in industries that are still working in order to protect the Scottish economy.
My apologies if I've missed anyone out.
Now comes the political bit.
What do a lot of the people I've named have in common? Firstly, many of them are women. 83% of NHS frontline employees are women. A lot of them have their own responsibilities as carers in addition to their jobs: they are bringing up kids and caring for elderly relatives. Most head off to work every day, whatever their responsibilities are at home. And bigod, the NHS notices when they have to go into isolation themselves because they or their families get sick with the virus and they can't come to work.
The second thing a lot of the people I've mentioned above have in common is that they are badly paid. Never forget that the Home Office's new immigration act (shelved for the moment but it will be back) classed many graduates working in the NHS as 'low-skilled'. So you spend 4 years at university preparing for the job you love and you're still not valued by the government.
Apart from NHS employees, many of the folk we're depending on are also women and work on zero-hours contracts - and a lot earn below the living wage. Those who work in care homes with vulnerable elderly people have sometimes found themselves being refused personal protective gear by the owners of the businesses they work in. Some of these owners have tried to point the finger at the Scottish Government for not providing PPE, forgetting that as employers they have a duty of care to their employees, as well as the residents of their care homes.
Some Scottish care workers have now been awarded a payrise. While that's fine, it doesn't hide the fact that generally any job that employs mainly women - and I include supermarkets in that list along with any job that involves caring for people: nurses, care assistants, early years workers in nurseries - pays a disgraceful wage. For many women - and I don't want to get into the WASPI scandal here but I could - life hasn't really changed much in the past 40 years or so. Or has maybe just got worse.
In case you've forgotten, women have always been badly paid in relation to men. In my 20s, women like me (2 degrees and a teaching diploma) were still being told by men that women earned 'pin money.' About the same time, Margaret Thatcher (a graduate chemist who re-trained as a barrister) couldn't get her head round the idea that people who did work that involved looking after the young, the sick and the elderly needed a degree.
Back then, real work was done by men in factories or sometimes in offices. It was as if working with people was demeaning and somehow deserved lower pay. Was it too easy maybe? The Tories set about abolishing well-paid work and didn't they do well? The Tories were kicked out in 1997 and by the time they wrestled power back from Labour in 2010 in their infamous coalition with the LibDems, heavy industry had just about disappeared in the UK. And interestingly, BBC reporters were talking about 'when you get into the office' with never a mention of the many people (mostly outside London where the BBC rarely venture) engaged in light industry or the women involved in the growing world of caring.
In my opinion, the coronavirus is a feminist issue. Women mostly do the caring and the serving in our society and politicians (sadly, still mainly men) don't seem to be able to adjust to a different world.
If your fervent hope is that we can all one day get 'back to normal', I'm afraid you may be deluding yourself. The result of every pandemic and epidemic in the past has been that society has been changed forever. There are going to be many people of all ages disabled by Covid-19. We can already see them on our TV screens. They may be leaving intensive care but they are still disabled and will need care. And there's already a huge shortage of nurses, carers and physios to take care of them and - we hope - restore them to full health.
Who will do this? Women, of course. Whether they'll go on doing it for £9.30 an hour is another matter. Maybe our new-found sense of community will help us to understand that people deserve better.
If you want to see the figures about women's work - or if you just don't believe what I've written - have a look here:
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/04/care-workers-need-more-than-clapping?fbclid=IwAR1Nc9bk67-P3CfHfOW29mDHkqXqtq2PuRftaj3ieZSaRK1pBCzm-0yuN0Q
And then, the ultimate question: do we care?
I will admit I've been waiting for a while now for the coronavirus to kill off some major celeb. I thought it might shock people (not in Scotland) to behave better. A few minor celebs have died - and I was really sorry to hear we'd lost Tim Brooke Taylor - but I was quite surprised when Prince Philip suddenly issued a statement last week. I don't remember what it was about but you can google it. For weeks now, several friends and I have been convinced he had snuffed it and the UK government was saving the funeral for a huge UK re-opening celebration.
If you're a royalist and decide to stop reading right here, all I can say is goodbye, because I don't care about the royal family - in fact, I think her majesty's Covid-19 speech to the nation will go down as one of the most embarrassing events of our time.
But my subject today isn't any of the folk above. And that's for a very simple reason: we've discovered politicians, royalty and celebrities don't matter a damn in a pandemic. Most of the essential workers who really do matter are nurses, doctors, hospital care assistants, care workers, pharmacists in hospitals and shops, physios, radiologists and radiographers, phlebotomists, ambulance drivers, cleaners and catering staff.
Just one small fact: if we don't have cleaners, basically we're all gubbed. In Scotland, hospital cleaning staff work for the NHS. Their work is not privatised - although it was at one time and those of us working in and being cared for in hospitals saw the damage.
Then there's check-out staff in supermarkets, the folk who stack the shelves overnight, their managers who were in my opinion dumped right in it by the Tories and left to deal with panic-buying and introduce 'social isolation', without guidance from Westminster politicians. Politicians keep away from problem areas - and probably don't even shop in supermarkets because they have 'staff'. And I'm not forgetting the people in the warehouses who distribute our supplies and the lorry drivers who bring the food to our shops, and the farmers who raise the meat we eat and grow the veg we need. Not to mention the fishmongers trying to keep the fishing industry alive and the posties and the couriers who have basically kept us going for 5 weeks since life shut down.
I would even squeeze in a wee bit of praise for the teachers who have kept classes going for the children of essential workers. And emergency social workers who have stayed on duty looking after the poor, the mentally ill and the elderly.
And that doesn't even cover the workers in industries that are still working in order to protect the Scottish economy.
My apologies if I've missed anyone out.
Now comes the political bit.
What do a lot of the people I've named have in common? Firstly, many of them are women. 83% of NHS frontline employees are women. A lot of them have their own responsibilities as carers in addition to their jobs: they are bringing up kids and caring for elderly relatives. Most head off to work every day, whatever their responsibilities are at home. And bigod, the NHS notices when they have to go into isolation themselves because they or their families get sick with the virus and they can't come to work.
The second thing a lot of the people I've mentioned above have in common is that they are badly paid. Never forget that the Home Office's new immigration act (shelved for the moment but it will be back) classed many graduates working in the NHS as 'low-skilled'. So you spend 4 years at university preparing for the job you love and you're still not valued by the government.
Apart from NHS employees, many of the folk we're depending on are also women and work on zero-hours contracts - and a lot earn below the living wage. Those who work in care homes with vulnerable elderly people have sometimes found themselves being refused personal protective gear by the owners of the businesses they work in. Some of these owners have tried to point the finger at the Scottish Government for not providing PPE, forgetting that as employers they have a duty of care to their employees, as well as the residents of their care homes.
Some Scottish care workers have now been awarded a payrise. While that's fine, it doesn't hide the fact that generally any job that employs mainly women - and I include supermarkets in that list along with any job that involves caring for people: nurses, care assistants, early years workers in nurseries - pays a disgraceful wage. For many women - and I don't want to get into the WASPI scandal here but I could - life hasn't really changed much in the past 40 years or so. Or has maybe just got worse.
In case you've forgotten, women have always been badly paid in relation to men. In my 20s, women like me (2 degrees and a teaching diploma) were still being told by men that women earned 'pin money.' About the same time, Margaret Thatcher (a graduate chemist who re-trained as a barrister) couldn't get her head round the idea that people who did work that involved looking after the young, the sick and the elderly needed a degree.
Back then, real work was done by men in factories or sometimes in offices. It was as if working with people was demeaning and somehow deserved lower pay. Was it too easy maybe? The Tories set about abolishing well-paid work and didn't they do well? The Tories were kicked out in 1997 and by the time they wrestled power back from Labour in 2010 in their infamous coalition with the LibDems, heavy industry had just about disappeared in the UK. And interestingly, BBC reporters were talking about 'when you get into the office' with never a mention of the many people (mostly outside London where the BBC rarely venture) engaged in light industry or the women involved in the growing world of caring.
In my opinion, the coronavirus is a feminist issue. Women mostly do the caring and the serving in our society and politicians (sadly, still mainly men) don't seem to be able to adjust to a different world.
If your fervent hope is that we can all one day get 'back to normal', I'm afraid you may be deluding yourself. The result of every pandemic and epidemic in the past has been that society has been changed forever. There are going to be many people of all ages disabled by Covid-19. We can already see them on our TV screens. They may be leaving intensive care but they are still disabled and will need care. And there's already a huge shortage of nurses, carers and physios to take care of them and - we hope - restore them to full health.
Who will do this? Women, of course. Whether they'll go on doing it for £9.30 an hour is another matter. Maybe our new-found sense of community will help us to understand that people deserve better.
If you want to see the figures about women's work - or if you just don't believe what I've written - have a look here:
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/04/care-workers-need-more-than-clapping?fbclid=IwAR1Nc9bk67-P3CfHfOW29mDHkqXqtq2PuRftaj3ieZSaRK1pBCzm-0yuN0Q
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