After being stuck in their homes for a few weeks (oh, how difficult 🙄) much of society seems to be going stir-crazy, no longer able to think rationally and logically, at least that’s the explanation I’ve come up with. Surely this many people can’t be this moronic, it has to be because they’re suffering from cabin fever. With most people isolated within a self-inflicted 24 hour news and social media echo chamber, I assume the incessant screen-based brainwashing is the reason they’re conforming with all the establishment-approved hollow gestures, jumping on any bandwagon just to break-up the monotony of being confined in a relatively small space. Either that or a large proportion of our population are in greater need of a cure to stupidity than a vaccine for COVID-19.

The first bandwagon I refer to is of course the utterly sycophantic and empty gesture of clapping for NHS workers (and to a lesser extent other key workers – more on that later). Going outside your front door to repeatedly slap the palm of your hands together in the hope that doctors and nurses will miraculously harness your impassioned energy is imbecilic. Robotically repeating an action once a week on a designated time and day does fuck all but show that society will take part in any old crap just for acceptance. Clapping for nurses and carers is also fast becoming the new Remembrance Poppy here in the UK with “why aren’t you wearing it?” transforming to “why aren’t you clapping?”… “how dare you not clap!”. The kind of people who crow on and on about the World War and how our armies “fought for freedom”, now upon seeing someone not observing these weekly cunty-claps, are shaming neighbours on social media (#ClapForTheNHS #ByForce). Fucking curtain-twitchers; first they’re selling-out their neighbours to the police and now they’re pestering folk if they don’t obey this shitshow. What utter wankers.

The clapping has also morphed into the banging of household, mostly kitchen items together, which is surely a sign of aggression rather than appreciation? Isn’t bashing pots and pans together an expression of anger? If you go out at 8pm on Thursday, you can witness what looks like inmates in an open-air prison banging their tin cups on the bars… Attica, Attica! This clapping has gotten so out of hand that large gatherings like the recent convention of cocks on the Westminster Bridge are taking place once a week. These sorts of mass gatherings show that social distancing is a distant second to empty gestures. Even the police were seen taking part at Westminster; you know, the bobbies who became so over-zealous after the lock-down that they were seen arresting and threatening people for sitting alone in a park, walking in empty yet scenic locations, venturing into their own gardens, or even going to work? So great that you pigs can send an innocent civilian back to their homes with a hefty fine but happily spread a disease and potentially kill people on a bridge that was only very recently the scene of a different kind of idiotic attack. In America you’ll regularly see policemen and women shaking the hands of hospital workers whilst they wear their personal protective equipment, meaning the potential contaminating of said P.P.I. and spreading of the Coronavirus, not to mention the failure to adhere to social distancing guidance which given that they’re “men and women of the law” is downright foolish.

Another empty gesture we recently took part in was the minute silence for fallen key workers. Maybe the government should source, purchase, and deliver all key workers effective protective equipment instead of politicising their death, deaths that the government arguably had a hand in causing. Surely it’s ironic that the Conservative leaders that we see everyday on our televisions during their daily briefings are the very people who voted against pay rises for “low skilled workers”. Under-funding the NHS has directly led to this situation. Piss off with your minute silence you Tory twats and go find a face mask manufacturer!

Finally, Captain Tom Moore, the war veteran who walked laps around his garden in order to collect for charity. Tom Moore, thanks to the news media, has become a media sensation and a national hero (bUt He WaS aLrEaDy A hErO – hE wAs In ThE aRmY!). Thanks to Moore, The NHS Charities Together now have over £30 million to spend but since we’re already taxed to fund the NHS, what will this money be spent on? Well, according to this BBC article the money will be spent on various shite including: “sleep pods, reclining chairs and so-called “wobble rooms” – areas where staff have a safe space to release emotions after a traumatic experience, such as losing a patient… Wellbeing packs including everyday items such as porridge, tea or hand cream have also been given to staff…”.

I apologise if I sound harsh or heartless, but this sounds like a lot of the fundraising money will be wasted. Is free tea something that a nurse needs? Are doctors short of money? Now I don’t begrudge nurses and doctors some morsels of free food whilst they’re over-worked but if you look closely at this situation this too is a tad ridiculous. I mean Deliveroo is giving “free food for NHS staff”, one of many unscrupulous companies who use the term “gig economy” to distract from the fact that their workers are in a dystopic work situation that would have sounded unbelievable only two decades ago. Apparently it makes perfect sense to donate food to an NHS nurse but simultaneously ignore the Deliveroo driver, the zero-hour key worker hero who is in real need of work security and money. And are the homeless all of a sudden housed? This blinkered, rainbow-covered admiration for the NHS is giving food to people who can afford it but hey, fuck the starving homeless during this pandemic; they only matter at Christmas when the Salvation Army become saints for a designated period of time.

Tom Moore’s altruism has led to other cases of idiocy; firstly the flypast over Tom’s house by the RAF (and the second one by the Army Air Corps). Imagine if they’d crashed. Are the hospitals around Keighley capable of dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic and an air disaster? This was the very reason that the public weren’t allowed to drive to “far” locations in order to exercise; unneeded driving could lead to car accidents and therefore add further strain to the NHS. But two fighter aircrafts and two military helicopters won’t cause any problems at all if they crash into houses filled with families isolating 🧐. And what about the Army officers stood outside Moore’s property, not to mention the masses of news presenters, camera-operators, and boom-mic-swingers pestering this old bloke? They could all be carrying the virus which could have led to not only a mini-outbreak in Yorkshire, but to a hundred year-old hero dying. Thanks BBC, ITV, and Sky News for socially distancing as you keep telling us to do!

Then there were the hundreds of thousands of birthday cards sent to Tom Moore. Sending piles and piles of unneeded letters through the postal system and therefore making more work for the Royal Mail (who in many locations aren’t adhering to social distance guidelines) is surely putting the health and lives of postal workers – also key workers – at risk! The sheer stupidity of society is dumbfounding. Who gives an airborne-fuck if some random pleb wishes Moore a happy birthday? And these are the people currently home-schooling their kids. I despair.

So while people blindly clap for key workers, most ignore the key workers who aren’t dressed in scrubs. The people who collect your bins, post your letters and parcels, deliver your food, stock your shelves, fix power-outages, gas leaks; they’re all critical workers too. Why add to their burden just so a gaggle of lickspittles can garner validation and a sense of undeserved pride?

The excuse for all this brainlessness is that people feel helpless during this peculiar situation and “doing something” rather than nothing makes people feel like they’re somehow helping. The key word in this sentence (and this excuse) however is “feel”; making you feel like you’re helping is not actually helping. Sending cards and clapping is ultimately pointless. Staying at home was already assisting the healthcare system, which was the main reason for the lockdown (remember the motto “We stay at work for you, you stay at home for us”?). Adding umpteen empty gestures to the mix is doing fuck all but show who the tits in your street are.

Clapping For Corona.