All clapped out

Sorry Vero, I think we are at cross purposes, I stupidly assumed you would realise I was talking about the females who come in to look after my wife, now at least 3 times a day. They don’t use the toilets for themselves. :smiley:

It just shows the calibre of man we have running Britain today, that he’d rather waste the government’s and law court’s time and money bringing legal action against nurses than sit down around a table and negotiate with them or, heaven forbid, actually go into a hospital for a few hours and follow a nurse or two at work. My daughter is a senior nurse manager in research, but even members of her staff, who have husbands working, are obliged to use food banks regularly. Disgusted and outraged don’t begin to cover it

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Indeed tim.

I read an interesting interview with Prof Neil Mortensen in the Telegraph yesterday, talking about the sexism and misogyny still present in the surgery field. I think it’s behind a paywall, but this is the link anyway…

Teaching and healthcare have been running on the goodwill of its professionals for years. I had a flatmate who was a teacher. They wanted to save money on paying outside playground supervisors, so tried to get him and his colleagues to sacrifice part of their breaks. When they pushed back, the head asked them ‘how would they feel if a child got injured because they’d refused?’. He voted with his feet fairly soon after.

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Good article, thanks for the link Pete.

The comment “female surgeons regularly mistaken for nurses or even cleaners.” resonated with me. Nursing is a wonderful profession but it pisses me off that the idea that girls are nurses and boys are doctors is still so embedded in the public’s mind. You’ll still even find it in children’s toys - girl nurse kits and boy doctor kits. :roll_eyes: Clobber there aspirations while they’re young, hey?

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My little grandson has a pram, pushchair, boy and girl dolls so he understands its not all boy’s things he is supposed to play with. We got him a vet’s kit with uniform that wouldn’t look out of place in Russian hopsitals with the funny skullcap.

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I think there’s even a perception in some quarters that female nurses and teachers can afford lower pay because their husbands will have well paid jobs!

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Less so de nos jours I think - definitely an attitude prevalent in the 70’s (and probably 80’s and 90’s come to that).

You should read the Daily Express online comments, Billy :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Hmmm, I doubt it :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

I think that perception is more prevalent than one would like to imagine (and many people keep quiet about it because they fear a disagreeable reaction ).

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Yes, in many roles and under many sorts of contract largely done by females, there’s an assumption wages, and access to benefits can be as low as they can get away with. Subtext is : the person doing the role is still culturally assumed to be eligible to be ‘kept’ ie have their basic need for a home met, by their husband or father/family.

I can’t speak for France, but in the UK this has been the case until at least quite recently. It’s also behind a lot of pay, role grading, and benefit discrimination.

Sadly David in the UK at least, grievances of women or professions having predomimantly female labour, whether collective or individual, are hard to get heard or dealt with.

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Maybe the women in your household clean the toilet after using it?

No they do not, quite the opposite, they don’t even flush it half the time, that is more often than not my job after they leave.
I recognise that they are on a very tight schedule so don’t complain, but apart from the once a week lady who comes in specifically to clean the house, I do everything myself including cleaning the toilet 6 days out of 7.

Just so you know, the Telegraph paywall is all done client side so can be easily defeated :wink: You can either disable Javascript on your PC or phone for telegraph.co.uk, or use a site such as 12ft.io or printfriendly.com to view their articles… such as:

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F2023%2F04%2F28%2Fneil-mortensen-president-royal-college-surgeons-interview%2F

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Thanks for the tip, Gareth! I was paying them a pound a month, but mostly because I’m addicted to their cryptic crossword. I’ll try that hack!

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Yes, they need the search engines to be able to trawl them :joy:

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I have a pile of Telegraph crossword books by my bedside.

I love the Telegraph cryptic! DT offered me a year’s Telegraph Puzzles membership fora pound, so I’ll be knocking the newspaper on the head. TheIoS app is a bit clunky but seems to be improving! I have some books too, but handy having it all on the iPad!