Thank you.
We teachers are campaigning to put schools on to remote learning. It isn't because we think we've got it tougher than you. We know you have to work with Covid positive positive patients with nothing more than a shop mask and a pinny. We know that if you look at your jobs and say "This isn't safe," you will be both absolutely right and we will be absolutely screwed.
I used to think you had full PP3 checked PPE with covid positive patients. I now know you don't. You are heroes. No-one wants to have to be a hero, but you are.
I'm campaigning for schools to be shut, but I would be proud to come in to work and look after your children, and the children of prison officers, and refuse collectors, and police, and food factory workers and all the rest.
I want schools to shut because we need to stop this new variant spreading - we are really close to getting on top with this through vaccination, I feel like if we allow this new variant to beat us in this last three months, we will have failed so badly.
I don't want schools to shut because I don't want to put myself at risk. I want schools to shut because I have a vision of bodies piling up in hospital corridors, freezer vans coming to remove bodies from hospitals, ice rinks piled with body bags, people going from hospital to hospital, trying to get a place for their dying relative. This all sounds so melodramatic now, and I really hope it still sounds just as over the top by the end of February, I really do.
That's my motivation. I don't want our hospitals to become war zones.
I am so proud of our NHS. Not clapping proud, but deep to the bone, this is what separates us from the animals, proud.