NHS nurses will receive a pay increase worth less than half a roll of Downing Street wallpaper this year – despite their heroics in guiding the country through a deadly pandemic.
According to reports in the papers this week Boris Johnson and his partner Carrie Symonds splashed out up to £200,000 on a refurbishment of their flat.
That includes wallpaper that cost £840 a roll, a Baby Bear sofa that cost £9,800, a Lilly Drum table at £3,000 and an armchair at £5,900.
Sir Keir Starmer has called on the PM to reveal “who paid for it in the first place” after the Electoral Commission launched a formal investigation into the matter.
But the bigger scandal is surely how such vast quantities of money could be squandered by a man who could not find the cash for NHS staff – despite some of them even helping save his own life!
Earlier this year as the UK came through a deadly second wave of the coronavirus pandemic the government recommended that NHS staff in England should receive a paltry 1 per cent pay increase.
The move, which was widely criticised by unions, equates to just £330 additional income per year for the average nurse, and just £250 for a newly qualified Band 5 NHS Nurse, according to the Royal College of Nursing.
That’s less than half what the PM splashed out on a roll of wallpaper in his flat, with newly-qualified nurses seeing their pay getting pumped by a paltry third of a roll by our estimates.
Related: Emily Maitlis explaining why PM’s ‘dodgy refurb’ matters goes viral
