NHS workers received nothing for their sacrifice, not even a pay rise

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

We totally agree with you: we don’t want applause from anyone, we want a pay rise instead.

NHS workers, myself included, worked hard throughout the lockdown period, keeping our family and children safe. But others got 80 per cent of their salary from government on the furlough scheme. NHS staff got nothing for their sacrifice, not even a lump sum payment of £500 to £1,000, which care home workers in France got – it makes me so sad.

Jaison Mathew
Address supplied

Arbitrary date

As an 80-year-old life-long supporter and vocal advocate of the NHS I am totally perplexed by the celebration of the 72nd anniversary of its founding. Did I miss last year’s 71st? Or the 53^rd, the 35th and so many others? Or was this “celebration” just another cynical and deceitful attempt by Boris Johnson to portray himself as a “protector of the people”? I find it interesting that he is not calling for a national celebration for the 240th anniversary of the founding of the Bullingdon Club, which I am sure is much closer to his heart than the NHS.

Ron Dawson
Dorset

Timing is everything

I find it quite strange that people are celebrating a 72nd anniversary. 70 maybe, or even 75, but 72 – how odd. And at the same time ignoring the 75th anniversary of the landslide election which led to the formation of the NHS and so many other things we now take for granted.

The Independent is not exempt from this criticism. I would have thought at least one commissioned piece would not have gone amiss. Perhaps the excellent John Rentoul or Tom Peck could have opined on the occasion.

D Leddy
Ottershaw, Surrey

Allocate the funds sharpish

Two cheers for the news (£1.5bn arts sector lifeline for theatres and galleries as PM bows to pressure to save cultural icons). The third will become due if and when the money reaches the sharp end.

And not just in London.

Eddie Dougall
Bury St Edmunds

I hope these apprenticeships are better

Forty years ago a Youth Training Scheme was a form of slave labour run by the politically incorrect “Manpower” Services Commission. Whilst I was working for £35 per week as a researcher for a doctor, a university colleague, in what was euphemistically called our “industrial year”, was assigning YTS placements for young people. It consisted of ringing up firms to ask how many they wanted. In three months he would just call back to see how many more, or less, but it was usually exactly the same as before. Because it was a scam, with payments for fresh workers only, and not very genuine apprenticeships, there was no incentive to train them, just work them to the bone and get rid of them to allow the new influx and a government bung.

When I asked my colleague the foremost thing he learnt from a salaried industrial year, he said “how to drink champagne”. The French lady, given the contract for Guildford, lived in Paris, flew over once a week to pay staff, held champagne receptions to celebrate all their wealth and all government targets reached.

Stuart Wilkie
Norfolk

Labour rows

I am a socialist, longing to welcome a moderate left-orientated democracy into government in this country.

Could you, on my behalf, tell the Labour Party this latest spat sounds like a lot of “he said, she said” by squabbling children!

Whatever your beef is, settle it discreetly, for goodness sake. Get back to the jobs you are paid for, by winning elections, looking after your members and the greater good of the entire country.

If the comments do not cover your current actual workplace activities then you are in the wrong job.

William Park
Lytham St Annes