Good news: Clap for Heroes yesterday seems to have been a bit of failure. Or at least those who are behind it (see below) look as though they will have to change it a lot.
I am hoping that the underlying reason is a sense of growing unease among working class employees of the NHS, such as nurses, about all the Covid-related absolute bullsh*t that is going down. Maybe some of them are even sensing the ongoing build-up to a Malthusian “cleansing”. If that doesn’t give them the collywobbles, nothing will.
From this perspective the idea of “Don’t clap for them; just give them more pay” would be a result of the trade union leaders having been called in by big business and government to help out. Please DON’T let this be the angle from which you oppose “Clap for Heroes”, because it’s a trap.
(Yes, this is how propaganda works in fast-moving situations. You are seeing how control over opinion is actually wielded. Shifts like this can say a HUGE amount about how the rulers actually rule, about divisions and strategy and dynamic, but you need to have worked out a fair bit about all of that first in order to understand it I think. Most critics understand little about this, because they are too busy deploying their petty bourgeois idea that bad management is some kind of big reason for stuff, when it isn’t. A good book to start with is Edward Bernays’s “Propaganda”. Bernays practically invented modern marketing and knew what he was talking about.)
I am all in favour of nurses getting more pay, but seriously that goal or demand should NOT be the main issue right now. It’s not as if they’re starving.
In fact if they are given more pay that will be advance warning (if any were needed) that they will be given some orders to do some very dirty stuff indeed. When you see how they are increasingly being presented to the majority who do not work in the “health” sector as some kind of soldiers or at least “home guard” force, be very afraid.
Anyone sceptical of the idea that the unions are helping out big business and the government should first try to wrap their heads around who the backers of “Together” actually are. Backers include Google, the global company that is deeply involved with the NHS’s Covid-19 “app”, and Aviva, one of the “Big 4” providers of private health insurance in Britain. When interests like that tell you to all stand together ritually clapping for the state’s heroic hygiene service…think a bit before saying “yes sir”.