Our Brilliant NHS Workers

We live in a country where healthcare is free to all. As we are all aware people who work in the NHS are all part of a big team put together to keep us alive and without the need to worry about huge medical bills as well as your illness.

Thats absolutely brilliant but the people who enable this system are underpaid for the risk they take to save your life.

We are due another stretch of covid variant and the nurses and hospital porters and surgeons are going to risk their lives to save somebody you know. How can you thank people for something like that. Also this time last year we were all outside clapping the NHS staff whereas now we seem to be taking it all for granted and see it as our own problem with the NHS less considered.

I cant cure a covid sufferer or even guess how to help with the medical side of things. What I CAN do is make the lives of those who put theirs on the line is offer my services at a 50% reduced rate.

So thats the new policy.

If you work for the NHS then you get a 50% discount on all labour charges up to £500 (I cant extend this to parts cost unfortunately).

Thank you to all NHS workers. What you do is really appreciated and courageous. I dont care if you work in the back office or do the laundry or your a surgeon – your all fine people and Ill happily work at a discounted rate for you because we know you love your clocks and we love you!.

There are some limits on how far I can go with this as I have to pay the bills too but Ill make your clock bills good deal easier to pay. If you could mention your NHS employed and send a pic of your NHS ID tag in your initial email then Ill make sure you pay a good deal less than…people who dont work for the NHS!. The other thing I can do for NHS employees is staged payments. Ill work on a 3 month staged payment plan if this makes your life easier. Thats what Im doing. Not exactly saving a bus load of nuns and kittens, but something at least.

You probably dont work for the NHS and are reading this purely because you read my blog. Have you thought about what you could do for NHS workers?. Its not something that immediately springs to mind when all we hear is bad news but Im sure there is something you can do for NHS workers somehow. I dont know what that might be or how you might implement it, however, these people do and will need our support. A donation to the NHS is laudible but does it get through to the people who do the work and take the risks?. Call me cynical, but I doubt it. If you can do something directly for an NHS employee I would say that its the way to go. that assumes you want to help and you can. If you dont and you cant then fair enough. Im not trying to change the world or judge anyone. I mean fine. You sit there with scantily clad maidens feeding your peeled grapes and then call an ambulance because you need your fingernails cut. Medically. And your not paying. I mean do you have to pay for everything. What are the overheads? Clippers I suppose. No, theres not judgement going on here.

Joking aside, if you know an NHS worker why not offer an open invitation to dinner once or twice a week so they don’t have to cook when they get home. It sounds odd and overly personal but thats how I grew up. There was more community. And how much time does a nurse or hospital porter get to mow the lawn or wash the car. I know it all sounds rather high minded and vaguely religious but when I grew up in the 70’s people were like this already. You knew your neighbours as friends. Things were just more socially integrated despite the absence of Facebook/Meta and computers. People did spend a long time on the phone mind you.

My point overall in offering an NHS discount is more about that sort of thing. Its got nothing to do with money from my point of view. Theres no publicity, no headline, just what I hope will become normality. Quite frankly it went wrong with the digital watch in my opinion. I was getting my first Timex Junior when the rich kids had red LED watches that lit up and told you the time in writing!. As an aside, Ive had three since, each of which has failed almost immediately and seems unrepairable but I still love them. Anyway, given that there is a chance of the NHS getting overwhelmed I believe its probably time to think about offering support, in whatever way, to those on the front lines.

I rarely do this type of article because who cares what I think. People want to know what I know about clocks and hear about interesting clock related things, however, there is a tenuous link in that Ive had a few NHS customers recently and the only reason they got their (prior) 25% discount was that I tend to get to know my customers to some degree and they obviously mention or refer to their work.

I cant become “Dr Clock” and just do NHS work so Ill have to limit it to a couple of clocks per month but that allowance should be more than adequate. If it goes over this estimate then Ill either cut the service and offer it to certain people on a face to face basis, or ill cut back the percentage or limit the financial elements in some way. Just a warning!.

Ill do a clock article now.