23 April 2020 (Thursday) - A Rant

I slept well; I slept through till six o’clock when I got up and watched another episode of “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” in which our hero finally went doolally.

I then made a start on today’s tasks.

What with coronageddon the official policy from work is (quite sensibly) to work from home if at all practical. The boss told me that with my managerial experience I would be the ideal person to review some of the paperwork concerning the departmental procedures and policies. I told the boss that because of my managerial experience I resigned from being a manager. We all chuckled, and I took some paperwork home.

I made a start shortly after half past seven and was utterly bored with it by half past eight.

It was with something of a sense of relief when "er indoors ^TM" said she was breaking for lunch, and did I want to go out with her and the dogs.

We did our usual circuit of the park; apart from one squabble with a huge dog, it all passed off reasonably well. Even if Fudge was rather reluctant to leave the river after he’d had a spuddle.

We came home… I did more work.

This evening we had another virtual geo-meet. It was good to catch up. "er indoors ^TM" boiled up a rather good bit of dinner and then…

I shall allow myself a rant.

As I’m typing this so some of the neighbours are outside for the Thursday clap-for-the-NHS ten minutes. I went out to have a look. New-next-door’s dog was cowering and trembling in terror at the fireworks that were being set off.

Again I find myself in a vanishingly small minority in not wanting to go out and clap.

These Thursday evening "support" events have quickly escalated from being a nice thing to do into something that people are *expected* to do – reading Facebook this evening it is very clear that those who don't join in are now being seen as killjoys and haters. Despite the fact that these people might be sleeping off a busy shift actually working in the hospital, or trying to put young kids to bed when everyone is outside banging saucepans waking them up. And (quite frankly) many NHS workers find the whole thing rather embarrassing.

I have to wonder if these public celebrations of the NHS help it. They encourage an increasingly prevalent portrayal of NHS staff as smiling, benevolent heroes. NHS staff do heroic things, but they're not enthusiastic amateurs who put on a uniform or white coat much like Batman or Superman dons a cape. They are professionals doing a paid job. You don’t clap the postman or the dustman, do you?

This sentimental portrayal of NHS workers undermines their professionalism and brings them down to the level of the youth club leader or the brownies’ Brown Owl.

Then there’s all the freebies that the NHS staff are getting right now. Over the last week I’ve been given home-made flapjack, a loaf of bread, some hand-milled flour, several cups of coffee and unlimited data for my mobile. This is all very kind, but the NHS is not a charity. It's a national organisation (the clue is very much in the name) which is publicly funded via taxation. Trying to fund it with seasonal/event-driven fundraising efforts undermines the fact that everyone should take their fair share of responsibility for paying for it.

The NHS isn’t something that you sometimes choose to give money to when you're feeling particularly soppy about nurses.

Why does any of this matter?, Where's the harm in a public upsurge of support for a vital, life-saving group of public servants?

It matters because movements of this kind are very transitory. They capture the public mood at a particular moment in time, and then that moment passes, and people move on to something else (Just look at how Prince Harry has fallen out of public favour in the last year). And we are still going to need the NHS once this is all over. (Which it won't be for ages).

There will be a backlash to all of this clapping and cheering. It has already started in some quarters. Those in the haulage industry, those working in the shops, those keeping the water and power flowing are (rightfully) rather resentful for being overlooked. So, once coronageddon starts to fade, and the NHS is crying out for funding, there will be those (and there will be many of them) whose instinctive reaction will be that the NHS has had its day in the spotlight: "What? Them again? I gave £10 to Captain Tom and now you want me to pay more National Insurance?”

Most importantly of all, throwing charity and applause at the NHS lets the government (of whatever political party) off the hook. It leaves people thinking that, individually and collectively, we have all "done our bit", because we gave them a few extra quid when we were feeling “totes emosh” and banged a saucepan on a Thursday evening.

Whereas the actual (but much less Facebook-able) truth is that the parlous state of the NHS is entirely down to a succession of governments which has spent the last decades running it into a state of deliberate neglect to the point where its only possible salvation is to be sold off, bit by bit, to the private sector. Nationalise the risk, privatise the profit. As ever. But, because the likes of Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson can publicly associate themselves with a time and a movement in which everyone loved the NHS, they dodge culpability for their ongoing systematic dismantling of it. A dismantling which (it has to be said) they’ve just continued from the Labour government of ten years ago and the Conservative government of ten years before that…

So... Show some socially distanced love on a Thursday evening if you want to. But don’t pressurize people to join in, and remember that you can do far more for the NHS at the ballot box than you ever can from your doorstep or your social media accounts... *if* you can find a party that really will look after the NHS.