Molly Case, Sarkozy

                                               People

Woman Reading in the Reeds, Saint-Jacut-de-la-mere, 

Jean-Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940)

Photo Credit: The Fitzwilliam Museum [CC BY-NC-ND]

…Molly Case joins their ranks [medical memoir authors] next week with a powerful account of her life as a cardiac nurse, How to Treat People.

…Case first caught the public eye six years ago as a student nurse, aged 24, when she performed her poem Nursing the Nation in front of a packed auditorium at the Royal College of Nursing’s annual congress. Her electrifying recital, with its battle cry “Hear us goddamn roar”, received a standing ovation and has been viewed almost half a million times on YouTube.

…What got her up on her feet that day at the RCN congress?

“I was frightened and demoralised, going into my second year of training for a profession in which I saw people who really couldn’t work any harder being relentlessly criticised in the media. I felt it was time we stood up and told people just how wonderful we are,” she says.

Her memoir has quite a different feel. Rather than an angry call to arms, it is an eloquent homage to the NHS and all those who work for it; a hymn to the art and science of nursing itself.

“I wanted to celebrate this incredible career I feel so joyous to have and the amazing community of people I work with,” she says.

…Case no longer feels the need to defend her profession; the detractors have melted away.

“It’s a different time,” she says. “The popular press views us as the good guys now. I think that is partly and unfortunately due to terrorist attacks all over the country and horrendous events such as the Grenfell fire. These atrocities have revealed the worth of public sector workers who seem to have their heads screwed on, while the people who are supposed to be leading us are in meltdown.”

How to Treat People is not overtly political but implicit in the stories Case tells is just how difficult her job has been made by 10 years of austerity.

“Staffing levels are frightening,” she says. “Too often there are too few staff not only to do the job you’re there to do but to do anything above and beyond. My job is really incredibly simple. It sounds corny but I’m there to help people, to care for them and make them feel better. It’s not rocket science.”

(Lisa O’Kelly, The Observer, 2019)

              You are an inspiration. Thank you.

France 

Nicholas Sarkozy was mocked as a philistine during his time as French president. His son is choosing a different path: he has launched a range of shoes dedicated to great thinkers and playwrights.

Louis Sarkozy, 21 and about to graduate in philosophy from New York University, has put his name to a line of luxury moccasins priced at about 300 euros a pair that carry quotes or symbols pertaining to Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Marie Curie and Sigmund Freud.

…The Sigmund, for example, is made of “two fabrics, the conscious, refined and frontal suede, and subconscious, coarse and honest leather”, Sarko Junior, as he styles himself, writes on the website.

…Sarko junior is 6ft tall but shoes are a sensitive subject for his vertically challenged father who wears shoes with discreet heel lifts.

His next project is a women’s range of shoes, which he hopes will be modelled by his stepmother, Carla Bruni, 51. “We’re trying to hire her at the moment. She’s a little bit above our budget,” he said. “We’ll kickstart her modelling career back up.”

(The Times, 2019)

Kickstart Carla with the conscious and sub-conscious moccasins? They should do it nicely.

*Anti-government gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protesters will be banned from demonstrating near Paris’s fire-ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral today, after the French interior minister warned that any plans to march on the banks of the river Seine near the site were “pure provocation”.

…More than 60,000 police and gendarmes will be deployed across France, including 5,000 in Paris, where police will secure the area surrounding Ile de la Cite, the island on which Notre Dame sits…

Some trade unionist and gilets jaunes said the huge amounts donated, particularly by big French businesses, had highlighted the complacency of those in power and business as low-income workers struggled to make end meet.

…Others criticised the potential tax breaks for billionaires’ donations which have caused anger among campaigners for tax equality. Some large donors have since insisted they will forfeit any tax deductions.

(The Guardian, 2019)