I was feeling good on Tuesday morning, thanks to an incredibly rare (these days) couple of hours of reasonably blue skies and a smidgeon of warmish sunshine, when I opened an email from the British Cleaning Council. What it revealed instigated a search for an illustration which depicted how my temperament had changed, to accompany the social media posts I was about to make: 'blood boiling'. Why? We've been stripped of our ability to attract people to a career in the cleaning industry via an Apprenticeship! Facilities Management's been affected too. I write this hours later, still on the boil & angrier than I've been in a long time. 

  

Aged four, a visit to town to be measured up for new shoes seeded an ambition work in a shoe shop. It never left me and that’s the first thing I did upon leaving school. Wonderfully fulfilled! My parents though, having had higher aspirations for their youngest, grammar school educated daughter, exerted gentle pressure which eventually made me reconsider. That, before reaching 18, I'd run the shop throughout busy twice-yearly sales, learnt to sell, dressed windows, prepared and paid wages and commissions and produced staff productivity charts, makes me wonder what lofty heights I could have eventually reached. I was about to say that the cleaning industry suffers from the same sort of bias that my parents held against shop-work, but actually it's worse. Cleaning's far more important than fashion and shoe-selling. It's one of the most vitally important industries there is and those who do well in it can end up earning excellent money. But it's not just about the money. It's about saving lives, since we know without a shadow of a doubt that the lack of proper cleaning and hygiene can quickly make people ill and that this illness can lead to death. 

  

What on earth is the UK Government thinking? I'm incensed! 

  

There's a lot I'm not happy about regarding the way these wonderful isles and the lives of those in them are being damaged by our leaders, but this latest decision is making me feel pretty militant. Our sector spends £millions in Apprenticeship Levy payments but once again there won't be a cleaning or FM Apprenticeship in which to invest those funds. If I could have my way, every cleaner at the Palace of Westminster would down tools immediately - along with those cleaning the private residences of the idiots who've chosen to relegate cleaning back to the low level from which we've all worked so hard to lift it. And every cleaning product supplier would stop deliveries to those who've betrayed us. In my view, the decision-makers who clearly look down on our profession should be forced to learn just how tough things can quickly become if their hardworking cleaning professionals leave them to wallow in their own muck.