I have to agree about fire fighters Mike. Why should they not be rewarded/thanked/appreciated in the same way that they are in France? I imagine that it is because in France, of course, the fire service provide the emergency ambulances which invokes the same grateful response as for our own NHS.
I would hope that the current daily out-pouring of gratitude from government ministers will not be allowed to be forgotten in the future at pay review time. Maybe even the £30m raised by one man will demonstrate how the public value the NHS in a way that has never happened before. Maybe it is in fact an indirect campaign to get a decent wage for our NHS workers.
Izzy x
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I have to agree with you that traditionally nursing was one of the few professions open to educated women and the “Florence Nightingale” image is still with us.
But I see another problem. A large proportion of nursing staff are no longer of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity.
This gives rise to a strange anomaly. Regarded as angels in uniform, the same people are often shunned and even insulted when seen in their civilian clothes. Like Victorian women of old, nursing imparts respectability.
But maybe attitudes to ethnic minorities makes an easy excuse for governments to justify the pay structure. “They all live in one room and they’re better off here than where they come from.” Is that so?
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That may well be so, but not always by all nurses and doctors, and not at all in my experience by other staff essential to the 24 hour care and welfare of patients. It would astound me to see gifts and treats shared with behind-the-scenes workers. A ward cleaner who helped herself to a toffee from the tin behind the nurses’ station would likely earn a reprimand as not. And I’m not wandering down some misty memory lane. I was in hands-on practice as recently as 2012. Much has changed but medical ‘elitism’ still exists.
BTW I have been a NHS trade union activist since 1957. Cue “leftie” jibes, 
.!
@IzzyM Quoting me: "Caring is womens’work… ’
Regrettably, that is a widely held misapprehension. I agree it could be read as my own view, but I reckon that if you see it in the context of the rest of my post, it was meant cynically.
It is certainly not my view. I have worked alongside and learned from (mainly) women all my adult life.
Explains everything. Could have guessed you were a goddamned Commie! 
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I work in Emergency Medicine & it’s been a long time since I worked on any ward but in all the A&E departments that I’ve worked in it’s all very egalitarian with one big happy team of nurses, doctors, porters & cleaners sharing boxes of chocolates & cakes in the staff room.
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You can bet I was. Sidney Silverman was my MP in Hackney (that was before the Blessed Diana Abbot was born, I think) One of the old school of radical socialists who built the welfare state.
Care to join me in a rendering of “The peoples’ flag is deepest red, dyed with the blood the martyrs shed…”? Only the PRC still flies it 
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Too busy:honeybee:
to become fatties, I guess? 
Oh you don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
Till the day I die, till the day I die.
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I don’t want to come across as preachy, and I accept you know what you’ve experienced, and are very perceptive about hospital culture and its peculiarities, somtimes to departments where relationships have to be tight and secure in the interests of safety and effectiveness.
You will also know that there are always ‘outliers’ in any group, people who resist some cultural practices, usually excusing themselves, and making up excuses not to join in, sometimes on principle, often with a white lie (it’ll spoil my appetite: I’m on a diet; all the Turkish delights have been snaffled etc) . Thus people who don’t take up offers of sweets or biscuits begin to exclude themselves from an innocent activity that is in the consensus virw a bit of harmless self-indulgence and an expression of egalitarian camaraderie, team-building, and a social norm. (BTW it used to be gifts of cigarettes too, I was a non smoker and built a cardboard stupa almost a metre tall out of packets of 10 fags, Woodbines, Park Drive and sometimes Players Navy Cut) pressed on me by patients who I was too shy to refuse and because I had been told it was unprofessional).
Outliers are often in a situation that their behaviour begins to be seen as discrepancy, and there is always a risk that they will be seen as aloof, or unfriendly, or unreliable: this is not an unusual phenomenon, and once it arises they are stgmatised (sometimes even by patients whose gifts have been turned down) , feel uncomfortable become increasingly estranged, are talked about, excluded subtly, factions may arise, morale and esprit de corps deteriorates, performance suffers, errors increase, blame is assigned etc etc.
Whole systems can be brought down like this, and have been in my lived experience as a nurse and as a senior manager in hospitals and clinics across the country. Lots of major scandals across several decades, all from which “lessons are learned” and "never again’ proclaimed.
I wonder if you have a view on this issue? It can all start with a simple remark (in jest, or course) like "who’s eaten all the soft centres? 
Oh Peter you really are going to the most extraordinary lengths in an attempt to prove your point. I doubt very much that “whole systems can be brought down” by a tin of Quality Street from a grateful patient.
I can’t accept that this is a serious post, therefore, as the lovely Deborah Meaden would say, “I’m OUT”.
Peace
Izzy x
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Here you go for a good ol’ sing song.
I prefer this one. Le chant des partisans.
And every good wish to you, Izzy. Do you know the old Dutch homily of the little boy who noticed a tiny trickle of water escaping from the face of the dam on his way to school? He stuck his finger in it, even though passers by scorned him: "Imbecile child!. But he saved the town from disaster. He had foresight. Some have it, others don’t.
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Pete,
I think you may find something a kindred spirit in this, it was dedicated to a nurse in the mid-1860 - 70s & sung by the manual workers/labourers socialists during the uprisings of the commune de Paris.
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Resistance
Bella Ciao
Eat the Rich
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Why am l not surprised
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Wozza thanks, it’s a beautiful song achingly well delivered by Yves Montand… 
If that’s your interpretation of what I wrote, I give up! 
See Captain Tom has been promoted to Honorary Colonel for his services. That should please the old soldier no end!
https://images.app.goo.gl/kKatX6YNSbxoYS9SA
And maybe a Military OBE? I don’t think Colonels rate a KBE, but don’t quote me! There are limits, old chap, there are limits! Pass the port, if you please.
I think they over promoted him, how cool would it be to be known as Major Tom, someone could even (re) write a song 
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