To be sick of 'if you voted for the Tory government then you're a hypocrite for clapping'

[ScarletFever]

I've seen this a lot on social media, and I didn't vote tory (I voted anyone but tory) but I feel that people are clapping to show they are thankful for the nhs firstly, but also for the other front line workers, the carers and cleaners and bin men and everyone else who is doing their bit.

I'll probably get down voted to hell, but the sanctimonious 'oh you're such a hypocrite ' is just so wearing

brefugee wow people still come up with that crap?

Yes, and up to now I've always answered in a hypothetical way that nobody knows how they will react to the situation (the real danger to your loved ones in both cases). But now we know so I have a much better clapback.

Sorry, PP asked about the Tory manifesto: i don't know it by heart and tbh i wouldn't be able to point to it. So good point and I agree i worded it badly. However the general point still stands: The tory party want to privatise the NHS.

Controversial point: maybe it would be better and more efficient as a private organisation (or series of organisations). Our experience with privatised companies, however, shows that it would most likely need more government money down the line, have low investment in itself, lower wages at the bottom and inflated salaries and bonuses for the top management, and shareholder payments prioritised above all else (as that is the duty of a private company).

We will never know if a labour government (or any other stripe of government) would have gone to lockdown earlier than you did - but the fact that Cheltenham was allowed to go ahead, and that Liverpool Champions League match with spectators when other leagues/countries had put a stop to that, is a scandal.

The NHS was underfunded under Labour also

You should probably check out the spending graph a pp highlighted.

People are clapping health care workers - not just in the UK but around the world. In the UK the healthcare workers are NHS employees because that's how we employ them here. In other countries they will have different employers. The clapping is partly about solidarity when people feel helpless to do anything else and partly appreciation for those who are working hard. It's not necessarily related to their employers.

However, many people on the left are intolerant and sneering of those who have different opinions to them.

Many seem to have forgotten the post-election analysis in December which concluded that Labour had become unelectable to a lot of their core supporters.

The reasons that people vote are a complex and are sometimes based on the quality of the local candidate rather than the party they represent.

The NHS is a bottomless pit financially and a sacred cow politically so it's impossible to have a rational discussion about whether there might be better ways to provide effective healthcare in the UK.

@KathyBriggs360 you're an appalling bully and should be ashamed of yourself but I doubt you are because, for some reason, you think you're morally superior to your neigbours when your actions indicate you're not.

I made a post on Facebook last night about a woman who lives near me who hasn't come out of her house once to clap the NHS and somehow it got to the point where she ended up commenting and apologising for her behaviour. Public shaming absolutely works

Not only is this nasty bullying, it also rather devalues the sentiment of what you're trying to promote. If people want to clap then I think it's a lovely gesture, but it's demeaned by the idea that some of the people doing it are there because they've been bullied and harassed into it.

In my area (long labour reign) many of us voted Tory to get the lazy good for nothing labour MP out of office. The new Tory MP is actually doing things for the local community now and it’s a big change for us.

It’s not always about the bigger picture or supporting the NHS. Sometimes communities vote for what’s happening in their town and then it’s not always black & white Tory vs Labour.

The militant way some people say you can’t vote Tory and support the NHS are at best close minded and at worst bigoted and nasty. Often voting is the lesser of the evils for your own area that directly impacts those around you, and nothing to do with central government funding.

@LettyBriggs 'We already pay away almost half of our combined salary in tax and NI so while I’d happily see NHS staff paid more through cost saving measures, I don’t want to pay any more tax to fund pay rises. And that for me is the bottom line.'

If you pay almost half your salary in tax, that's circa £250k and a monthly takehome in excess of £10k.

Would you honestly not settle for a takehome of £9,500 for a better funded NHS? Do you really think that your salary would be possible without the work of a large number of people arbitrarily earning substantially less than you, and a tax system that has paid for the infrastructure your company uses and the education system that trained your staff? The income inequality in the UK isn't something that innately stemmed from some people being better at things than others, it's systematic. I'd think long and hard about the view that you're not willing to pay more tax to get a better funded healthcare system over the coming months.

brefugee
All fair points, I think.
Conservatives are ideologically in favour of privatisation as traditionally nationalised industries have been less efficient and they prefer a much smaller government which I am broadly in favour of.
But I don’t think clapping for the NHS is anything to do with how you think it should be run really. I am clapping to say well done and thank you to the staff members.
I’m not a massive fan of tesco and Sainsbury as companies but I would happily clap for their staff who are going above and beyond in this crisis.

@KathyBriggs360 see I don't agree with public shaming. I think it's just a way of trying to curtail freedoms ie voting freedoms, free speech etc. Publicly "shaming" someone ie putting someones name up in public so that they get abuse and name calling from hundreds of people...so they feel bullied into changing their ways. So basically someone isn't allowed to vote the way they like or act the way they like or not participate in life the way everyone else sees fit for fear of being scrutinised and hurled insults at? Why isn't someone allowed to follow what they think is right? Why do they have to follow the majority just so they don't get vilified?

Don't we thankfully live in a society where we have freedom? So why would you want to take that freedom away from people?

I haven't once been out to clap the NHS. Do you know why? Because I've been on shift, as a nurse, in an NHS hospital every backshift for the past few weeks.

As I say, I work for the NHS. But I would never dream of curtailing someones freedom to vote for the party that they so wish or to clap or not clap for the NHS.

I think some of the posts on this thread demonstrate the issue perfectly - happy to clap, not happy to pay more for a properly funded health service. In which case you can stick your clapping somewhere unmentionable - actually meaningless.

We shall see if this gratitude has any bearing on what happens to the NHS in the future but I highly doubt it.

If you vote Tory, you're voting against the NHS and pay increases for the very workers you now depend upon, including the underpaid supermarket shelf stackers on zero hours contracts, the self-employed delivery drivers with no sick pay, the overworked Amazon gig economy victims pulling goods off of warehouse shelves.

So, yes, it is utterly hypocritical to come out and cheer for people when you vote for a government that undercuts them in every important way.

YANBU, OP.

I wonder what Kathy's reaction would be if a Tory talked about using shaming as a 'political weapon' to make working-class northeners 'submit' and vote for them.

What about the people in
Wales clapping then...

Seeing as they're NHS is run by Labour...

And that's absolutely shambolic. Beyond shambolic.

nation.cymru/opinion/why-are-welsh-labour-politicians-pretending-they-dont-run-the-nhs-in-wales/

YABU. Clapping won’t help them, they need proper funding which the Tories haven’t provided over the past decade. Quite the opposite actually, they have just slashed funding. So yeah, you are a hypocrite if you voted Tory and claim to support NHS staff.

If you vote Tory, you're voting against the NHS and pay increases for the very workers you now depend upon, including the underpaid supermarket shelf stackers on zero hours contracts, the self-employed delivery drivers with no sick pay, the overworked Amazon gig economy victims pulling goods off of warehouse shelves.

Not necessarily as @ElloElloVera has just pointed out - sometimes people are voting for a committed local candidate but still people insist on coming on this thread and trotting out the usual stereotypes. It's this kind of thinking that will get some Tory MPs elected because the tropes bandied about by other parties don't always bear any relation to a decent MP on the ground so voters ignore them.

@Smileyaxolotl1

Yanbu - the NHS is a woefully managed bottomless pit

Could you please give some examples of the woeful management?

Worth pointing out that the OECD consistently has the NHS top of the international league for leanest management.

Kathy I think you’ve been lucky to be honest. If you’d tried to publicly shame someone else you might have got more than you bargained for. As for your neighbour you have no clue whatsoever why they chose not to clap. Get off your high horse and sort yourself out before having a go at others. Sometimes I wonder how things in this country can get so bad at times but you’ve just reminded me that people like you exist. My cholesterol is fine thank you. I spend my time looking after what’s important in my life and not bullying others

That committed local Tory candidate is still supporting a platform that undercuts NHS funding. That's how that UK political system works. If you vote Tory, you are voting in a government that is dismantling the health system that all these hypocrites are clapping away for.

@GhostofFrankGrimes - spectacularly missing the point there. At no point did I mention when we went into lockdown. Read the post properly.

Yabu. I do wonder how the death rate would be affected if the tories hadn't spent the past 10 years running public services into the ground.

imagine voting for Tory, who cut funding for all sorts of things and when people get mad at you.. you blame others

Well I've not been out & clapped so just shoot me now Kathy. What I have done is send a message to everyone I know who works for NHS to say how are you, I'm here if you need to offload, etc. When I'm shopping I say thank you to staff and ask the person on the checkout how they are. I call thank you after the postie and the bin men. You know it takes a second or two to demonstrate that you value someone and what they are doing but it probably adds up to more than your two minutes of mindless clapping.

@Smileyaxolotl1
Agree. I'm on the fence about clapping because i personally find it a bit cringe, but my mum who is 78 went out last night and a new neighbour who recently moved in only then realised she lives alone and held up a sign with her phone number and the offer of shopping, checking in now and again and generally being lovely and neighbourly. Her street all kept distances as recommended.

But when i see that people do it without the social distancing, or the odiousness of shaming people who don't it sticks in the throat a bit.

YANBU. A huge amount of doctors and nurses voted out of the EU. People just don't like to admit to that fact!

Around the time of the vote there was a huge MN post to ask what job people do if they voted out. Lawyers, police, doctors heavily featured. People even argued they followed that career path because someone who voted a certain way couldn't possible have done a job like that! 😂

Your MP on the ground will vote with his or her party. That’s what you do - so you had better like their policies.

As for privatising the NHS, plenty of senior Tories think this is a great idea. If you get them drunk enough they will absolutely tell you what they think of the NHS; it’s communist, needs to be broken up, and people need to pay insurance.

These are all fair ideas but saying the Tory Party is pro the NHS is laughable. It’s had terrible funding for the last decade and all the lucrative bits have been slowly sold off to Virgin Care or services being provided by American healthcare firms (who are really friendly with certain Tories).

Pandemic medicine is not lucrative. It’s public health care for everyone because all kinds are likely to die. Someone should ask Matt Hancock what happens to all the NHS staff after this mess is over. Nice words but no action is my guess.