Today we heard that Barclays staff bonuses (er “incentive awards”) amounted to £2.38 billion this year. That’s right. I’ll spell it out: £2,380,000,000. That’s a helluva lot of noughts.
We are told that these kind of sums are a necessary addition to the bankers’ very generous salaries because – y’know – y’all just gotta pay competitive rates in order to get the best ..yada yada yada.
Yawn.
No. Wait! I’m going with this one – aren’t you, fellow carers?
The bankers tell us that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
And if you pay monkeys what carers get, you get starving monkeys.
Now, I feel that my daughter deserves the very best of care round the clock. How can she get it from a carer who is paid £0 per hour? Surely she would get increasingly better care if her carer were paid £10, £100 or £1000 an hour?
1.4m UK carers are working around the clock, 7 days a week. That’s 168 hours a week. And if you want to replace a single one, at agency rates (£15 per hour – to the agency, that is, not to the paid carer they often exploit), it would cost £131,400 for a year.
A lot of money? Yet you could pay for 36,225 family carers to work half-time – a mere 84 hour week – and do something to realise their own potential for the very same sum that Barclays is bestowing on the arrogant ignorant greedy separatists they employ. On TOP of their pay, sick pay, holiday pay, expenses and pension pot.
Crikey, that bonus pot would even pay a lifgechanging Citizens Wage to 76,450 totally unpaid carers. Just sayin’.
Are you honestly going to tell me these bankers are doing a better – or more worthwhile – job? Last time I heard, no carer has ever been near to bringing down western capitalism.
Sign up to our Carers Virtual Strike and show the cost of care http://www.caretostrike.co.uk/ (Not a carer yourself? sign our new supporters’ page – and show us that you care that we are careworn!)
Carer with Attitude! 
We also need to educate the public too. As I gave up work to care full time for my mother I’m regarded as a Benefits Scrounger and it makes me feel so worthless. When asked recently by someone “Do you work? ” I foolishly replied “No I just look after my mam now.” I got looks to kill followed by someone saying, “Well I’ve worked all my life and when I see those folks who will not work etc. etc.” Not one word of praise or acknowledgement was mentioned. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. We need to praise and appreciate those who have sacrificed their own prospects not to mention giving up a decent living wage to care for their loved ones. I cant drop everything and go on holiday and many other things people take for granted. Like having an uninterrupted meal, hairdressers etc. I’m lucky I don’t have a mortgage and that I was able to do this, but I don’t want to put her in a home and she doesn’t want to go either. What’s the difference between me and a stranger caring for my mother?
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THe difference is that the state is relying on you to work unsupportable hours for nothing, while a stranger caring for your mother would be paid – at the least – the minimum wage, sickpay, holiday pay, overtime and have hours governed by the European Working Time Directive. I do hope you have signed up to theCarers VIrtual Strike to try and inform the ignorant of what a carer’s role really is! http://www.caretostrike.co.uk/
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