When I was being stabbed he said I just thought well that’s it

“When I was being stabbed,” he said, “I just thought well, that’s it – I’m dead.”The only defence I had left was to hold on to the blade I was lucky that I wasn’t killed,” he added. “We are such an easy target.”The London Ambulance Service’s current anti-violence campaign “No Excuse”, suggests a range of initiatives; its mission statement, while admirable, is noticeably dominated by the future tense. Spencer, who is still heavily bandaged, has already formulated a few proposals in the simple present “We need radios that work,” he said, “and we need them now We should be recognised as a full emergency service. The police have instant backup, stab vests, the right to use restraint techniques, and CS gas. We have nice colourful coats.”These things need to be changed not by internal initiatives, but by law.

I believe that the crime of an assault on a public servant has to be introduced, and that it has to carry the same penalty as assault on a police officer This has to be dealt with at ministerial level. Because we’ve had enough.”Mercifully untouched by Drew’s fatwah, I returned to London ambulance headquarters to attend a press launch for “No Excuse”. The service had tried to persuade two ministers to attend but was informed that the politicians were otherwise engaged.Simon Spencer is not the first ambulanceman to be stabbed on duty, and yet, for his colleagues, his name has already acquired a special resonance and serves as a focus for their anger at the fact that the most vulnerable of the essential services should also be the most poorly paid, and the least well defended. The senior politicians, Simon fears, will show up only when there is a fatality, and possibly not even then.

Some crew members aren’t planning to stick around to find out.One ambulancewoman, standing outside A&E at St Thomas’s in the early hours, told me she was leaving to spend more time with her son. What, I asked her, would she like her child to do for a living?”I don’t know,” she said. She paused, thought for a moment, then added: “Not this.”© Mail on Sunday Review. It started about two years ago.