Government’s Mistreatment of Key Workers

No photos – just a rant!

I haven’t been posting on my blog lately as you may have noticed (I’ve also left a lot of forums too).  I’ve been trying to push myself into at least writing a post on why I haven’t been posting but the reason I haven’t been posting has stopped me!  That reason? Sheer naked anger at the Government and their mistreatment of key workers during the pandemic! (excluding the NHS of course who’ve been looked after – I think the Government think they are the ONLY key workers!)

Since my semi-retirement, I now work half-time in a shop – this is classed as an ‘essential’ shop so we’re open all the time through the various lockdowns.  I love my job but never realised before working in a shop how little shop staff are thought of – both by the government and many of the population.  Basically, as we’re low-paid, we’re classed as ‘two-a-penny’ or, in the case of the pandemic, ‘cannon fodder’.  If we die, no problem, lots of other people will pop up to take our places.  While the government may find this attitude comforting, rest assured, we don’t!

Our shop is particularly dangerous due to being in a very popular tourist town which, even during the lockdowns and tier systems, people were coming from all over the country (e.g. we were Tier 2 and were getting very many Tier 4 customers before Christmas).  So we were facing people from all over the country and even from abroad on a regular basis.

So, basically, I’ve been very, very angry all year and getting more so.  What about? the complete lack of vaccinations for key workers like myself.  I know I’m now ‘old enough’ to get a jab but this isn’t an age thing putting us most at risk.  Workers in essential shops like myself are facing the public every single day – en masse – from all different areas.  Many of these are refusing to wear masks as it’s easier for them to just say they’re ‘exempt’ (some are, most aren’t – we get whole groups coming in saying they’re all conveniently exempt).

Teachers are just as much at risk as we are – although they’re seeing the same people every day, the people they’re seeing are the ‘super-spreaders’, i.e. children.  I’m not sure about the percentage of youngsters who are carrying the disease but it’s a very high one.

While I’m not disputing that some people are validly exempt, the exemption system is completely flawed.  People can just decide on the day that ‘they’re exempt’ and go about as they please maskless in public as much as they want.  To be done properly, the system should have been only on the say-so of a medical professional, preferably people’s own GP and not just on people’s own say-so.  A certificate would also have been a good idea.

I also don’t really see why exempt people can’t stay away from public places and public transport more than they do.  A difficulty with wearing a mask doesn’t equal a difficulty in spreading disease and, in not wearing a mask in public, they are putting themselves at as much risk as they are putting others.  If I was genuinely exempt, there’s no way I’d be going into shops and on trains and buses without even the protection of a mask!   When I asked one unmasked young lad in our shop if he had a mask, he held up his asthma inhaler and said that’s why he was ‘exempt’.  I told him I was asthmatic too and that’s precisely the reason I was always masked in public places!  He looked a little thoughtful after that!

Every set of news headlines has a trumpeting, patting-on-the-back section for how wonderful the vaccination program in Britain has been.  Well, maybe for some…

It’s completely impossible to avoid these headlines and these have been what have mainly been winding me up.  I don’t watch the news as such and, if I’m somewhere where it’s on, when they start on about the vaccination program, I promptly walk out swearing.  But you don’t have to actively try to watch the news – it’s foisted onto you everywhere you go.  My main source is whenever I log on to check my e-mails each day, before you can access your in-box, there are the trumpeting headlines staring you in the face – they’re completely unavoidable.

In the shop, we often get abused if we even dare to ask someone if they HAVE a mask (not to wear it – just do they have one – people often forget).    One woman even stood ranting and swearing at us in the shop for over half an hour while waiting on the phone to get through to head office (I’d slipped my name badge off already).  When she got through, she completely misquoted me and said I’d insisted she wear a mask.  Luckily, the other customers at the time were also key workers and knew our situation exactly so they were sympathetic to us and not her.  My manager, who I work with, wasn’t at all put out with me for asking the question and stood by me very well which was nice and, luckily, her manager above her also did.

It was particularly angering to both myself and my manager that this woman took the attitude that we were denying her human rights by asking her if she had a mask.  Obviously, in her book, the human right of shop workers not to have the disease inflicted on them by anti-maskers just doesn’t exist.  She also said I was perpetrating a hate crime – to us it rather looked like all the hate was coming from her.  This woman was not atypical – we get many more coming in ranting and preaching at us.  Some of them even go so far as to berate the other customers for wearing masks!

I’ve written to the Minister for Health, the Department of Health, my local MP – the first two completely ignored me, my local MP just stuck to the party line each time I contacted him, saying that the vaccination program was going really well and all the old folk had been vaccinated.  He didn’t give a damn that we were in danger of death every single day we were at work.

I found it totally ridiculous that people like my mother, well in her 90s and completely housebound and living alone with no visitors, was vaccinated straight after the precious NHS and (quite rightly) care home workers.  There was no chance of her catching it unless I visited which, as her part-time carer, I had to.  I was literally the only risk she ever faced.  As I was at risk and she wasn’t, wouldn’t it have been simpler to vaccinate me, and all the other key workers, before working down the age groups?

The correct order should have been: 1) NHS workers in risky positions and care home workers, 2) essential shop workers and teachers (and possibly Police although I’m not sure how much one-to-one indoor contact they have with the public at large not having had much to do with them myself).  After this, they could have worked down the age groups to their heart’s content.

I was eventually offered a vaccination via my age group.  This incensed me even further.  I didn’t feel there was any way I could get myself vaccinated ahead of my colleagues so I refused until 2 out of the 3 had had their jabs.  Unfortunately, my manager is only 26 so she’ll probably never get one so, reluctantly,  I told her I couldn’t wait for hers and went and had mine.  I think she understood but I felt horrifically guilty.

The three of us who eventually got our vaccinations all have lung problems – I have asthma and mild COPD, they both have asthma.  Even then, only one of us got offered her jab due to having asthma.  This is again ridiculously unfair as this disease is a LUNG disease and so people with lung problems are obviously more at risk than the public at large.

I’m sure I’m right in assuming that my doctors ignored me because my asthma is so well-controlled.  It’s only well-controlled because I decided to get really fit and hillwalk all the time!  Before that, I was in hospital with life threatening attacks at least once a year!  So it angered me further that I was being penalised for taking control of my health (but then, aren’t we often?)

I was further angered by (more unavoidable) headlines about ‘Covid Passports’, i.e. places were going to start discriminating about who they let in due to their vaccination status which would be perfectly sensible if everyone had been offered one but most hadn’t.  So, as well as being expected to be ‘cannon fodder’ in the shop, us lowly shop workers (teachers and so on), were possibly not going to be allowed out for a meal, a drink in the pub, a holiday abroad etc.  This has now been cut back officially to holidays abroad but there’s nothing to stop premises over here insisting on vaccinated customers only (although they’ve lost so much money by now I’m not sure they would do that).

To me that is a total slap in the face from the government.  They’ve already made it patently clear that we’re completely dispensible in their eyes and count for nothing except cheap labour and that we can crawl away and die.  Now they’re fine with us putting ourselves at risk every day but don’t want us having a social life or any fun outside of work.

I’m not sure whether I’ll actually bother to vote in the next election as I can see that the public doesn’t really have a voice.  If I do vote though, it will no longer be Conservative – before the Brexit issue (when I started to vote things like UKIP), I always used to vote for them.

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