Claps for Nurses and Tears for Bojo – just don’t mention all the dead bodies and an NHS for sale

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“…no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party… so far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.”

Nye Bevan retains a razor edged salience today. Remember the picture above? How quickly some forget: it was  a four-year-old boy forced to sleep on the floor of an NHS hospital during the election. Cowardly Boris Johnson refused to look at it and snatched the phone of the journalist who tried to show it to him.   

“They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through… Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman.”

Of all the social safety nets that the Tories have destroyed and all the public assets returned to private profit, the NHS is their golden goose. Boris Johnson’s comfy majority will mean the swift death of free public healthcare in the UK: a reality vividly illuminated by the Tory response to the ‘Corona puzzle’.   

Covid-19 had the public health services of South East Asia straining for containment and going into lock downs that would damage GDP. Mass testing? Contact tracing? Public health services? Placing public health above GDP? All disagreeable concepts to the Tory mindset. What to do?

Risks were talked down and NHS readiness talked up. Dominic Cummings punted a plan that would reduce social care costs and protect the economy: herd immunity. Few are ordinarily concerned about ‘treasure island’, but a global pandemic cast BoJo’s bully beef bravado in a bad light.   

Too late the Tories realised their catastrophic error: hospitals would be overwhelmed in a global spotlight, with Italy providing a grisly prelude, so they reluctantly reversed course.

But it was already far too late: Covid-19 thrived in a nation still at work, in school, down the pub and at Ascot. A new study predicts that the UK will become the country worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic in Europe.

In this crisis, Sky News and the BBC are as always protecting the establishment by hiding their sins. Daily Tory sales pitches at Downing Street are ‘selling shoddy stuff’ once more. 

Even while Tories clap nurses (they sneeringly denied a pay rise) and professing their enduring love for public services, they are proceeding with the sale of the NHS.  

In ‘Yes Minister’, Jim Hacker asked Sir Arnold if government sins and disasters were only truly disastrous if the public got to know about them, to which he replied ‘of course’.

It cannot come out that the UK is flogging its own health service to Donald Trump in the middle of a public health emergency; neither must the eugenicist amorality of Dominic Cumming’s herd immunity policy become known. 

With dead bodies piling up and ministers flailing, the establishment needed a distraction and the illness of Boris Johnson was perfectly timed.  The Tory press suddenly remembered that individuals matter:  well, rich ones anyway.

Amoral bumbler Boris Johnson become a heroic martyr and world statesman overnight. It is no accident that the press are trying to whip up mass emotional hysteria a la Princess Diana. A nation engulfed in irrational sentimentality (which is not the same as empathy) will be unable to think and there is much to remain awake to right now.   

If we let the Tories hide behind the Queen, Churchillian posturing and tears for Bojo, then there will be no justice for the thousands of people who are dying needlessly and the NHS sale will proceed as planned.

It will be left as always to a small group of genuinely independent journalists, bloggers and activists to fight the lies of the corporate media – but they cannot succeed without everyone who cares on board. 

Wherever you see candles for BoJo and hypocritical praise for the NHS, remind people that unless the truth about the UK 2020 pandemic is spoken and the sale of the NHS halted…

…there will be no free universal public health care to protect us when the next pandemic arrives.  

Since 2013 I have worked between 4-6 hours a day on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and uncovering truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.

I am a home schooling parent on a low income – paying for the domain, web hosting and security entirely out of my own pocket.  

If you found this article useful and could spare us a few shillings to help keep our lights on, it would be very much appreciated.

Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.     

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