The Iron Lady Did Good ….

Ding Dong …… and so forth are the words filtering across the web and into column inches but really should we be celebrating the death  of someone, dancing round their grave like vultures, picking at the carcass and ripping it to pieces for sheer delusional enjoyment. Delusional enjoyment is what I call it as half the people squealing in excitement at the death of Margaret Thatcher are it seems people who were not around when she was ruling her Iron fist or even people who have picked up a history book.

Many people it seems love or hate Margaret Thatcher, there seems to be no middle ground that people fall in. Maggie’s like marmite on toast. Usually in life there’s a middle ground that people dance around not really ever setting route as ideas and ideals can be changed so quickly and mercilessly, but when it comes to The Iron Lady it seems people know exactly where they are. I was born in 1980’s, my first memory I have of politics is John Major losing the elections, I was gutted. We watched the elections every year in my house like some people would watch the world cup and in  my house we were very much Conservative. Now you may sit there and say, ‘How could you be a Tory?’ You may say, ‘Maggie did nothing but destroy the country,’ but in our reality in my family Maggie helped us get us from where we were to where we are today.

My mum is a single parent, she got pregnant young and ended up in council housing, like many she struggled and claimed benefits to get by, but Maggie gave people like my mum the chance to take responsibility for themselves and move themselves from council housing, from leaching off the state to get by to owning something that was there’s, something that they would have to work to keep. Maggie Thatcher gave £26,000 to people to leave council housing and with that money to buy and invest in private property, obviously there was clauses and so forth attached to this, one won’t bore you with those details. My mum knowing that life doesn’t throw up many opportunities took it with both hands and went on and took the money Thatcher was offering to work towards a better life for her and her children, that’s  me. My mum always says without  Thatcher giving people the chance to get out and take responsiblity for themselves she would most likely still be stuck in council housing, claiming off the state. Thatcher not only gave my mum hope but a new moral attitude, in that she must work her hiny off  to make the chance Thatcher had given her work and no one else is responsible for that but her. I believe that people are responsible for themselves just like Thatcher. I am not saying in life think of number one and don’t give two cents about the next person, what I am saying is though that in life don’t expect people to carry you, you must be independent.

My mum now is near paying off her mortgage, now tell me Maggie Thatcher was all bad and I will tell you to look at the bigger picture. Maggie was tough and she may at times of been too brutal in her actions, but in the end many of her decisions were the right ones people were calling out for. When Maggie was elected she was elected by the people to sort out the unions as the unions were holding the country to ransom, did she do what you asked? Yes she did. Maggie may of  at times not done things with the compassion or the ease that it needed, here i am talking about the closing of mines, but it had to be done. Mining was losing money hand over mouth, our country was paying taxes to pay mines to stay open that weren’t even turning a profit. Unions were to big for their boots and taking liberty’s, Arthur Scargill has allot to answer for and in some ways why aren’t people looking at him and damning him as he has blame to claim. Maggie should have closed the mines slowly, worked out a better plan instead of leaving areas ruined for years to come, but I can say one thing, she did what she was elected to do, can many of her predecessors say the same? I will never vote labour, never trust a party that sell half the country’s gold reserve in haste, which cost us around a tidy £5 billion, not much to lose hey Gordon… clever much, I think not. I like Maggie Thatcher like it or lump it. Thatcher really knew what working class meant and we need more of that in the party, not people educated at Eton, fed with a silver spoon as they don’t know what us everyday people really face. I am pretty sure Cameron as nice as he is has ever had to walk 6 miles because he didn’t have the fare for the bus or the 21p to take a leak at Marylebone.

In the end, as many people yell with glee at the passing of The Iron Lady I will take a moment to remember a women who changed the course of my mums life for the better and say,  thank you.

Life as a paediatric nurse

I decided to become a paediatrics nurse when I was 21, I was in an office job and I remembered thinking, I need something more, more job satisfaction! I was fed up of office memos about not using the work phone for personal use (guilty) please don’t use Facebook during work hours (very guilty) and whoever got really drunk at the work do and photocopied their boobs, it’s so 1980s you’re lease collect your bra from Jan in personnel and if you are lucky she might have some of that dignity that u lost between the xmas and new year dos.

When I am 80 in my slippers I want to have done something to make a difference, selling shampoo was not really cutting it. Cold calling pretentious hairdressers enquiring about their levels of stock was slightly depressing especially at the price I was working for, busking in the tube station would have probably been more fruitful. I had to decide what I wanted to do! Big decision, all very daunting, cue lots of pensive thoughts and flicking through the list of ucas courses alphabetically.

My mum being a nurse I thought, that could do, that’s seems worthwhile, I’m afraid there was no great shining light, like where I saw God and he showed me the way, I just liked working with people (most of the time) except cab drivers and bouncers and the chatty person on the bus! I had work with kids before and loved it, so naturally I decided to train to be a children’s nurse, mainly there appeared to be less bum wiping and old people shouting for help in the middle of the night, then when u go to help them telling you to piss off!! And answering the call bell then getting there and they’ve forgotten why they called, bless! not so much bless after the 10th time, one has to mentally control themselves not to hide the remote.

So after a week of penning my personal statement about how I wanted to be the next florence nightingale I had my interview with the uni. I got accepted and got on the course. So being a student nurse, it’s not quite the uni life every other lucky bugger gets, five-hour lecture on Monday then Tuesday to Sunday spent in the student union discussion fancy dress ideas and latest episodes of Towie. It’s bloody hard work, and some of my placements where awful. At one point I even nearly quit, I reckon at some point everyone must think, what the hell I am doing?? Now I am qualified and in a job I love the days of being a student nurse seem long ago. I have been qualified 3 yrs, I work in intensive care now and I love every minute of it but at some points of my training I did want to throw all my toys out of the pram!!

Being a student nurse is like being at the bottom of the food chain especially if you are in your first year, expect to get eaten people!! sometimes literally!! I remember going for a toilet break, which was code for, a good old cry, be careful though, a weep is better than a sob, Spending to long makes your mentor think you have weird toilet habits, although if your lucky you get a mentor who doesn’t even notice when u slip off, plenty more opportunity for moments of self-pity and self-doubt in the toilet cubicle. When I was not crying in the toilet I was running drug charts to pharmacy, obviously this is an invaluable tool for when I’m qualified, never mind me learning how to draw up meds or getting involved in something useful. In the end your kinda happy when someone wants you to go to pharmacy as at least that’s 20 minutes of your day wasted, maybe longer if there’s a queue!

So like I said as a student nurse you are the bottom of the food chain, you get given jobs people would rather not do themselves, sometimes u strike lucky with a mentor who is happy to teach u useful things, milk these people dry of all knowledge as your next mentor might not be so willing or actually even be that clever! It’s easy to get downhearted as a student when you have a bad placement or their someone on the ward who makes your shifts so horrible you constantly check the off duty to see if their on so you can change your shift! Just remember in life and I know, there always be people like this, every ward you go to there always be a few eejits! even qualified there are people who like to make me u feel small so they can feel big, the quicker you learn to let these people slide off your back the better. As long as your working hard and bettering yourself, taking all the opportunities you can you know you are trying your best and that is all you can do. So when that day comes and your in your fresh new uniform, that tells the world you’re a proper nurse now, it’s ok to be scared, it is perfectly normal, if you are scared more fool you, a cautious nurse is always a better nurse, remember safety first peeps, and it’s ok to ask questions, the more you ask the more you learn and then the more you know what the hell you are doing!