In response to Margaret Ashworth and Michael Fahey: Claptrap for Our Carers,

Great Briton wrote:

I hear that clapping will become a weekly event. On-the-spot fines will be issued to those who don’t clap loudly enough. There will be a hotline to report your neighbours.

Ravenscar wrote:

As society breaks down and compassion is sneered at so does emoting become the new virtue, show ’em that you care more than jack next door. You emote if you want to – me, just for the atrocity of Staffordshire – never, never never will I clap the NHS.

Frank Fisher wrote:

It’s a political act. When – if? – this phoney epidemic finally ends, we will be told that the nation was saved by the NHS, and that the grateful nation loves the NHS, as demonstrated by their worshipful clapping. And of course this will be used to argue against any reform, any introduction of competition, any learnings from more effective health systems on the continent where insurers demand efficiency and paying customers demand choice and care.

What we are witnessing is the creation of a narrative akin to the defence of Stalingrad that will be used for generations to support this teetering failure.

Robert Edwards wrote:

Having lost both parents to incompetent hospital diagnosis, I have a developed (if loaded) view of the excellence of our National Treasure. How it has shifted from the necessary and practical early protocol drawn up under Henry Willink in late 1943 (ahead of the assault on mainland Europe) into the bloated, socialist votecatcher which it is today, is a matter of profound regret.

However, even I think that ‘Clap for Carers’ really could have more carefully phrased than that. Surely they have enough to worry about already!

PS: The Telegraph’s Charles Moore agrees with us.