Caring for the Carers

The world is so out of whack isn’t it? I was watching a news article on television the other day about caregivers to the elderly and disabled and about how they are trying to negotiate a minuscule payrise. Contrast that to the bulging paychecks of the financial and legal community and it doesn’t take long to get a rather nasty taste in your mouth.

What’s more galling is that seemingly you don’t even have to perform well to get your payrise, bonus, share options and other perks of office. Let alone even be held to account in any shape or form for blowing up companies through bad management, excessive debt and downright greed. The court cases take forever, if they are ever started at all after all the toing and froing between lawyers who split hairs over details of what their defendants did or not do. Then, like magicians they reinvent themselves and reappear in another role somewhere else with barely a dent in their well-oiled armour and a new juicy package to boot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah! They’re smart, they work hard, they’re away from their families more than most, blah blah blah. Cry me the proverbial river.

Ok, it’s unrealistic to expect that those in professions who truly make a difference in people’s lives – nurses and caregivers, teachers, childcare workers – will ever be rewarded on par with someone employed in an investment bank or public company. But why does it have to be like getting blood out of a stone when it comes to giving these people a payrise? Surely they deserve it?

I know we are talking in general about the government funding these incremental payrises and when I say the government, of course, I mean you and me via our taxes. I’m not pretending that it is an easy task to run and manage the budget of a hospital or school. On the other hand, I don’t know many taxpayers who would begrudge an improvement in the balancing act of the wages of caregivers versus money spent on some ridiculous initiative after intense lobbying by some obscure group hellbent on receiving funding.

Aarggghh…life is so damn complex. I’m probably opening a can of worms with my rant. I know there are many more shades of grey to this issue that I can adequately present in my short blog. By their very nature blogs are a window into what one is thinking about at a particular time. By their very nature they are transient and ephemeral. But there you have it, for what it’s worth, a window into my mind one night this week.