> which my NHS working family hated
Why?
Why?
I had to queue to get in to the store because at the time social distancing rules meant only so many people were allowed to shop at any given time. Once the Covid marshal granted me entry I washed my hands as required with anti bacteria hand wash and put on my disposable gloves. I then proceeded to carefully navigate the store ensuring I avoided sharing an aisle with any other shoppers to avoid attracting the attention of one of the many Covid marshals positioned around the store ensuring shoppers were adhering to Covid policy. While shopping the tannoy system repeatedly reminded me that I must remain masked and to keep social distance from other shoppers. I walked over to the Pizza aisle to grab a Pizza, but most were sold out. A few remained though, however they were all NHS themed pizzas to support "our NHS". Then the tannoy system announced to customers that the weekly scheduled national NHS clap was about to begin and that shoppers were encourage to take part. I completely forgot about this... I'm holding a basket in one hand and 2L bottle of Pepsi in the other. Do I put down my items and wait for the national clap to begin or should I just continue shopping as if it's not happening? No, what am I thinking, not clapping is not an option. I put down my items and wait for the clapping to begin. Then we all clapped before proceeding with our shopping.
Good times.
Did the clapping actually help the NHS in any way?
However, most healthcare workers are paid incredibly poorly and the NHS is generally in an extremely poor state, in part due to mismanagement and underfunding by successive governments. Many healthcare workers feel their lives could be made much better at the voting booth, rather than by people clapping at their door and continuing to vote for a party that has a history of (justly or not) battling against even below-inflation pay-rises. As ever, other factors are at play and the issue is almost certainly not as simple as blaming the government. Nonetheless, there is a general feeling that the Conservative-led government policies since 2010 have reduced the standard of living for many, especially healthcare workers.
The UK is poised to have a change in governing party for the first time in 14 years, at least, but the clapping was seen by many at the time as hypocritical of the voting public.
The UK government has brought one of the best free national health systems in the world to the point of being worse than useless in a span of about a decade.