The Sun’s Sick NHS Hypocrisy

Yesterday evening at 2000 hours, people up and down the land emerged from their front doors, on to their balconies, or merely opened an upper storey window to applaud NHS workers who are now on the front line of the battle to contain the Coronavirus outbreak. Some banged pan lids, others rang bells; the message was the same. At a time of national crisis, even the sceptics want the NHS to be there for them.

Sadly, though, not all that applause was sincere: in Downing Street, after making sure the broadcasters had been briefed and cameras were rolling, out into the still of a now-silenced central London came alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to show that he too applauded the NHS. After all those years of voting through cut after cut after cut, and rubbing shoulders with NHS abolition enthusiasts.

And as Bozo could do, so could the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, who yesterday morning told “NHS honoured as landmarks turn blue tonight to salute doctors and nurses on coronavirus frontline”, and going on to tell “As a salute to the NHS and the courageous efforts of everyone involved in the nation’s healthcare system, places including the Royal Albert Hall and Lincoln Cathedral will turn blue”.

This morning’s Sun front page carries an item at the bottom right letting readers know “Nation joins in 8PM applause for NHS heroes”, another article declaring “At 8pm, grateful Brits obeyed government advice to stay indoors and instead showed their support from inside their homes, on balconies and in their gardens … Some set off fireworks as loud cheers rang across the UK to thank those risking their lives to fight the deadly virus”.

How different it all was to just four years ago, when a Sun editorial looked at junior doctors taking action in support of decent pay and conditions and thundered “Sack the docs” in response, frothing “The new all-out pay strike by junior doctors is a declaration of war on the Government using patients as cannon fodder. If any die, or even suffer, the young medics responsible must be struck off”. And there was more.

“If these militants and their hard-left union intend to up the ante in what has become an infantile and politically-driven row over Saturday pay, so should the General Medical Council … Other doctors and NHS staff will handle emergencies during the walkout. If they are too stretched to save lives or ease suffering the GMC must show no mercy to those whose fault that will be”. And then came the ranting, slobbering peroration.

“Doctors have no right to abandon emergency patients in order to swell their bank balances. Nor can they maintain the fiction of ‘saving’ patients when they are putting their lives at risk … If a few budding careers need to end abruptly before the rest finally understand their sworn duties as doctors, so be it”. Yeah, sack them all!

The dregs of journalism who have over the years gravitated to the Baby Shard Bunker must think that the public out there in the real world is as stupid as they are. But that public is wise to the stinking hypocrites who couldn’t give a stuff about the NHS.

We see you, Murdoch goons. You don’t care about the NHS. And we don’t care about you.

Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/zelostreet5

[The Legalballs Fund has now closed]