‘You Clap For Me Now’ poem highlights hypocrisy of coronavirus response

Last Updated: April 15, 2020By Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ventilator: the people treating us with these machines are likely to be of foreign ancestry, who aren’t wearing the right Personal Protective Equipment thanks to the plans of our Tory government.

I don’t feel comfortable with all these efforts to get us on our doorstep applauding the work of NHS staff – mostly of foreign descent – who have been treating the coronavirus. Some of them have been dying of it too.

My concern is that it is hypocritical for us – as a nation – to applaud the same people we were – as a country – trying to push beyond our borders for the last decade (almost) since the Tories came into office and started ‘othering’ them, and certainly for the last (nearly) four years since the EU referendum.

It is certainly hypocritical of our Tory government, that has failed to provide enough PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) to keep them safe from the disease.

That is why I think the poem You Clap For Me Now that has appeared online is timely. So too is the comment by ex-Tory chairperson Sayeeda Warsi that accompanies it in this tweet:

And if you think I’m making too much of this, consider this. The Twitter profile Tory Fibs has been keeping track of NHS deaths related to coronavirus. It tends to support what I’m saying:

https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1249337545541988354

Point made?

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https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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8 Comments

  1. Jeffrey Davies April 15, 2020 at 6:25 pm - Reply

    The NHS is a poor shadow of whot we had broken by the Tory’s we have allowed them to without a fight it’s just about sold off ready for insurance companies like unum who are the start of the welfare state downfall yet our nurses doctors who are the stalwarts of our NHS alot are people who came to this country to work for the NHS who are now dying doing their job yet these devious lot wants to send home those outsiders but now it’s to late has now the public have heroes

  2. zzzzxtdjfeb April 15, 2020 at 6:45 pm - Reply

    I wish you wouldn’t lie. Most of NHS staff are not foreign born. You can’t change reality because of a political agenda. You and others on the so called left are erasing millions of people and really what this boils down to is erasing the working class. And it won’t work because what exists, exists and what doesn’t exist, doesn’t exist. As for the leaked report it has no satisfactory conclusion for people like you and the others still inside the party. Starmer keeps his cards close to his chest and is hardly aware of the Tory Party and doesn’t care much what they say and what they demand. The plague has changed everything. Labour has its 200 or so MPs and over 6,000 councillors and 500,000 fee paying members and is part of the state landscape since 1900. Formed out of the industrial revolution and related back in time to the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Three revolutions. The move to the right across Europe is not good news but is constrained and limited in how far it can go. The Tories are despicable and will continue hating the labour movement and the working class. The core of the Tories is the fantastic wealth their families plundered from the empire. It’s this wealth that needs focusing on and for it to be taken off them by force if necessary. 180,000 families who have fundamental control of state power. Three million people comprise the totality of them. Wealth and power handed down through the generations. It’s the same mob that existed in 1947 when India was signed over. They came back home through the next decades as the rest of the inglorious empire dissolved. And now we have here in Britain the last colony of empire. The administrative centre of a vast criminal endeavour. The people are living under colonial rule. The last redoubt of psychopathic killers and haters and liars. A threat to the entire world and with US debasers of Hope, Love, Peace, Friendship, Goodness, Unity, Laughter, Life. The objective is clear. Militarisation of the people. Liberate Britain and you liberate the world.

    • Mike Sivier April 15, 2020 at 6:49 pm - Reply

      I didn’t say most NHS staff were foreign-born. I said most of those who have died are of foreign descent.

      Please don’t try lying to people on This Site – you won’t get away with it!

      Your descent into incoherence in the remainder of your comment speaks for itself.

  3. Peter Roberts April 15, 2020 at 6:49 pm - Reply

    This is absolutely appalling. We need to charge that fat, lying slob currently squatting in No.!0 with Malfeasance in Public Office – the ultimate sanction is life imprisonment. Get rid of him and his bunch of henchthugs.

  4. Growing Flame April 15, 2020 at 9:43 pm - Reply

    It’s clear that there is a lot of hypocrisy when so many of us clap and bang pots and pans for the NHS, and other Care workers, on Thursday nights. But it is a real show of solidarity too.
    I think that there are a minority of Tory supporters who go on TV and claim their support for the NHS to the rooftops because they know they have to do it to retain some credibility. They KNOW they are being hypocritical but they need to keep power, whatever it takes.
    There are also thousands(millions?) of Labour supporters like me who do it to show appreciation and , yes, to encourage others to share that feeling of support and togetherness.
    The interesting people must be the Tory voters who actually support the NHS as an idea but who allowed themselves to vote Tory in the deluded or self-serving belief that the NHS would still be , more or less, protected under the Tories. But, perhaps, they were so obsessed with Brexit, or British nationalism, or hatred of immigrants, that they were prepared to sacrifice their own economic and medical interests to get their hearts desire.
    THEY might be the ones who might be moved away from their devotion to Toryism by the collective show of solidarity they see all around.

    I am sure that the Thursday evening clamour around my small, private estate in a small Southern English town, pales by comparison with many towns elsewhere, but it still happens and it brings together the local Labour supporters at least, plus others who are not so hidebound by their reactionary beliefs. I know that the Tories nationally also call for the Thursday night clapping, but, in reality, you have to really MEAN it to do it with any enthusiasm.
    In short, it is a progressive political act that sidelines the worst Tory hypocrisy and puts them on the backfoot.

    • Anthony Turtle April 16, 2020 at 12:04 pm - Reply

      “it is hypocritical for us – as a nation – to applaud the same people we were – as a country – trying to push beyond our borders for the last decade ”

      I am sorry, but I have appreciated the sacrifices made by NHS workers of all creeds, colour or ethnicity for many years. An immigrant nurse saved my wife’s life back in 1994 when my (then girlfriend) told me after an hour long journey across London to “F@#$ off”.

      As far as I’m concerned leaving the EU is a mistake, it has caused divisions between family and friends, it has heard future Prime Ministers lying to the country, but here mentality meant we got the upper class twits in power.

      Yes, 48.3% of those who voted in the election to stay were outnumbered, but it doesn’t mean we all wanted our European and other workers kicked out.

  5. Hecuba April 16, 2020 at 5:23 pm - Reply

    ‘Clap for the NHS’ is a worthless fascist tory propaganda exercise because it ensures focus is taken away from the fascist tories who are accountable for instigating state sanctioned murder of ever increasing numbers of medical staff and female care workers! Clapping does not save lies – the fascist tories know this which is why they are promoting this worthless exercise.

    It is appalling that so many migrant medical staff are dying unnecessarily because of the callous and greedy fascist tory murderers’ obsession with money and profits!

    Remember it is the fascist tories who have destroyed the NHS and eliminated thousands of medical staff. Accountability must be focused on the fascist tories and their cynical racist and xenophobic rhetoric against women and men who just happen not to be white UK male citizens!

    • Mike Sivier April 16, 2020 at 6:33 pm - Reply

      “White UK male citizens”?

      I think you’ll find “white UK Tory citizens” would have been a more accurate description of where their loyalties lie.

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