Was Toms effort equivalent to 50 years of voluntary service to multiple charities?
Hmmm. You're coming across as somewhat churlish here.
No he isn't. He is bang on the money.
The guy walked up and down his garden. And for this he was feted as a national hero and some sort of symbol of the NHS, and the plucky Brit. It isn't just the fact he was 100 that played into the myth making. It was all the military stuff too. World War 2. Medals. Captain (none of your NCO scum).
None of this is his fault, and good on him for walking up and down his garden, but there are many more people who have done much more and for much longer. The 'Captain Tom' thing is a media creation and I'm not buying into the myth making, especially if that cunt Johnson stands to benefit by osmosis.
At that point in the pandemic, there was a lot of fear and anger amongst key workers about the crapness of UK PPE provision, with lots of media reports of people wearing bin bags and a lot of concern about having to wear surgical masks when PPF3 would have been preferable.
NHS staff and carers, in particular, were becoming infected and dying because of limited PPE and incorrect practices in the early stages of the pandemic. The Tories wanted to make sure this didn't reflect badly on them, and one of the ways they did this was by making use of the language of war. The purpose of this was to encourage people to believe that working for the NHS was heroic. This was not in order to promote positive views of NHS workers, it was much more malign. It was to help persuade people that deaths in NHS service was part and parcel of the job, by nudging people to think of them as soldier-like. This had the effect of reducing public pressure to improve matters.
And along comes Captain Tom.
He did strike me as likeable individual, but the rest of it leaves me cold.