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Biffy Clyro frontman Simon Neil has hit out at Prime Minister Boris Johnson, criticising the Conservative government’s treatment of the NHS before and during the coronavirus crisis.
Neil was speaking to NME for this week’s Big Read when he took aim at “heinous lump of beef” Johnson and “those Tory fuckers” for years of “neglect” when funding and prioritising the National Health Service.
“The NHS should be untouchable now for generations and generations,” Neil said. “Make no mistake: Boris was a few months away from selling it off. After he was ill [with coronavirus], he was like, ‘I owe them my life – I can never repay them’. Yes you can, you bastard: you owe them millions.
“Hopefully he’s a man of his word and does something. We need the NHS more than we need the fucking government.”
The frontman also said that the ongoing crisis had brought “what makes society work and what keeps us going” into focus, and felt encouraged by people re-evaluating what matters.
“We need food, we need our health, we need a roof over our heads – those are the essentials,” he said. “Key workers are not ‘low-skilled workers’; we need them. I don’t know if it’s to do with me turning 40, but when we come out the other side of this I don’t think I’ll have an awful lot of patience for people who are selfish and fucking self-obsessed. If you don’t know your place in society at the moment as one of many, then you’re probably a psychopath.”
He added: “Boris and that mob have been digging at experts for years. There are people who are often wrong but never in doubt. These people are running the world at the moment.”
This comes after the band launched a range of ‘MON THE NHS’ merchandise to raise money for the National Health Service.
As well as discussing the inspiration behind ‘A Celebration Of Endings’, Neil also opened up about life in lockdown, the return of his side project Marmaduke Duke and his thoughts on “growing old disgracefully”. Read the full NME Big Read interview here.
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