I’m sure I speak for us all when I say we as nhs staff appreciate all of the extra love and support during the pandemic towards those of us who risked our lives day in day out to care for you and your loved ones during the peaks of the virus. We are grateful for the claps, the motivation and morale, the wonderful paintings displayed on windows, the businesses who fed us, the banks who allowed us to skip queues, the supermarkets that gave us hours to shop, the people who saw our badges and asked if we were okay. These are all actions and decisions made by you incredible people in showing us you care and for that we are truly grateful.

But what did the government really do for us? They painted ‘thanks’ on roads and put billboards up. Well.... they gave us recognition in the form of being able to park free when we travel to work. Some of us up and down the country to where we were needed. That was a shocker! Something they done to actually acknowledge us?! It helped thousands of us who would pay ridiculous amounts daily for parking. It minimised our time in finding parking spaces on roads, reducing the possibility of us running late.

Guess what? Lockdowns have ended and so have restrictions, so our free parking is being scrapped, along with the acknowledgment of our hard work.
There are some of us who held the hands of your loved ones as they gave their last breaths because you were sadly not allowed to be there with the rules they set, we comforted and prayed for every hand we held, we became family and friend to every person in our care, we cried for every patient we lost and kept them company. We became a family to our patients more than we could to our own. And we done this with love! Without complaint! And we will continue to do so because that is exactly who we are and what we do - pandemic or not! Due to shortness of staff, some of us bathed and sat by every deceased patient until they were able to be bought back to you - sometimes hours on end. I’m sure these are hard to read, and I sincerely apologise if my wording offends anyone, the things we’ve seen have been extremely difficult for us all. And for every patient we sadly lost, we mourned, sometimes one after the other and with no time in between to comprehend what was happening in the world.

Scrapping the free parking for us only matters because it is as though the need for us is gone now and the only ‘benefit’ given to us by the government is being discarded. But even when this pandemic is long gone, we will still be going into a hospital to save lives, we will still be away from our families and we will still shine our compassion through to every life we encounter.

Please sign this petition and help us make our voices louder! Let our thanks be more than a temporary stunt made by people who do not even follow the rules that they outlined themselves!