How dare Luisa Zissman spout off about nurses as she basks in luxury with millionaire husband, says Ulrika Jonsson
OH it must be just dandy to be Luisa Zissman.
You know that irreverent, confident, vocal one from The Apprentice.
I’m picturing her sitting in her schmancy fancy house, basking in her life of luxury that mere mortals can only dream of and with her multi-millionaire husband by her side, spouting that if NHS staff “aren’t happy with the pay the job offers, do a different f***ing one”.
She must feel so bold and empowered.
According to Zissman, their proposed strike action this month is “irresponsible and cruel”.
Well, out of the mouths of those lacking in knowledge, experience and those empathetically bankrupt often comes a diatribe of provocation and insult.
What is cruel, Zissman, is that the very people — those treasured nurses who kept us alive during the pandemic and were forced to witness many die — are paid so little for a job that demands so much.
Except, of course, nursing is not just a job, is it? It’s a vocation. It’s a calling.
It is work carried out by exceptional people of a certain calibre.
It takes someone very special to want to do a job that involves three years’ training.
It takes dedication to long, painful shifts which disrupt personal lives.
It requires someone willing to attend to the most basic and sometimes demeaning tasks.
It takes immeasurable levels of empathy and a heart of steel to have to endure horrendous life-and-death situations on a daily basis.
It’s not a job anyone does for the money. I can’t imagine there’s a nurse on Earth who is in it for the money.
And for that we are all quietly very grateful, because Zissman’s suggestion that they should like it or lump it would leave us where exactly?
It would leave us without any nurses at all.
Granted, everything seems flaming hopeless at the moment.
We’re experiencing a general strike in all but name. Not only is the economy up the spout but there aren’t many aspects of our lives that aren’t currently disrupted by industrial disputes.
If you want your post or packages delivered, the chances are they’re going to be late or not turn up at all.
If you want to catch a train to work or the Christmas party, you might as well cancel.
If you trip and fall it’s unlikely an ambulance will get to you on December 21 nor 29.
And you can forget about even trying to book yourself a driving test because a bunch of civil servants are laying down tools, too.
‘Ignorance beyond reproach’
I can’t agree that all these disputes are of equal worthiness regardless of the hard cost-of-living crisis we are enduring.
However, Zissman’s comments about nurses are not only extraordinarily heartless but show an ignorance beyond reproach.
Sometimes you have to wonder if some people aren’t entirely bereft of intelligence and empathy.
I’ll make the radical assumption here that she can’t be entirely devoid of feelings, because she’s a mother of three, after all.
But as a businesswoman and entrepreneur she claims that if they would all stop doing their jobs then salaries would organically go up because there would have to be a massive recruitment drive.
I may not be a businesswoman but I know enough about the NHS to know that it isn’t a business like any other.
It’s a broken system where retainment and recruitment has been an issue for some time and nurses leaving their profession hasn’t hitherto increased pay, has it?
I fully acknowledge that the Royal College of Nursing’s strike action starting next week — the first in its 106-year history — will do nothing for the stress on the NHS nor the backlog of patients in need of referrals and care exacerbated by all the lockdowns.
But while I don’t like that they are resorting to such measures, I like even less the pen pushers and accountants at the top of the service creaming off six-figure salaries while hard-working staff have their backs up against the wall.
The nurses’ frustration and desperation is palpable.
Of course, there is no way in the world we could ever pay these guardians of humankind what they really, truly deserve.
By her own admission, Zissman says she couldn’t do the job of a nurse because she “doesn’t give a s**t enough” — at the very least that’s an acknowledgment that the work they do is one of responsibility, protection, nurturing and selflessness.
Presumably this also alludes to the fact that she is somewhat lacking in all of the above.
She won’t care what I or anyone else thinks about her comments — which is why, thank the Lord, there will never be a Nurse Zissman.
I’m a rum one to ask about boozing
APPARENTLY three quarters of adults underestimate the amount of wine in a 250ml glass.
Plus, we are all inclined to pour bigger measures at home than you might expect in a pub or bar.
Well, it definitely can’t be me they’re talking about because I don’t often drink wine. Rum is my jam.
I’ve always sub-consciously known that I lie to myself (and those around me) about how much I might have drunk the night before.
The sentence always starts with: “I really didn’t have that much . . . ”, as I lie flatlining on the sofa the following day.
I tell myself it was only this much. I tell myself I only had three drinks.
I blame my hangover on the fact I hadn’t eaten. Or the alcohol had a strange effect on me because I was drinking on a day with a “y” in it.
Like on Christmas Day two years ago, when I found myself on my knees talking to God on the great white telephone and I had to ask my son to cook most of the Christmas dinner . . .
That day I tried to convince myself and everyone that the bottle of rum I’d consumed the day before really hadn’t been a whole bottle.
Pray, do tell, how do we measure measures when we’re at home if the NHS says we should not consume more than 14 units a week?
My unit is probably bigger than yours.
And that’s not even a euphemism. It’s a statement of shame.
TV host is not kidding
WHEN asked about having children, Graham Norton replied that he “wouldn’t be a very good father” because he “doesn’t have the patience or the interest”.
I love his honesty. Although, for the vast majority of the time it is women who are persistently asked about having children.
Collectively, societally and culturally we have an expectation that women should bear children.
It’s almost an assumption. The pressure is intense, and despite my own maternal instincts, I have always rather admired those women who have been capable of telling it straight – that they have no intention or desire to ever have kids.
It’s rarer for us to ask men. Presumably because men can have kids at more or less any age so the pressure is not as urgent as it is for those with a biological clock ticking.
Never one to be constrained by societal norms, I make a point of asking men all the time.
Partly to get my own back for those women who will always have been pestered but also, it might be relevant to my life if I date someone whose desire is to have kids with this ageing, no-longer-fertile hasbeen.
Graham’s response made me titter.
If someone asked me today – after four kids – I would probably say the exact same thing.
I don’t have the patience or the interest . . .